ravM*. «*i' JQF-tf J< c ^ 



■HlHHi^HBSBHiHHHHHBBG 




LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 

ITCti 



UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



HOUSEHOLD^ 

•^REMEDIES, 



FOR 



The Prevalent Disorders of the 
Human Organism. 



—BY— 






/ 
FELIX L. "OSWALD, M. D. 



So- 



ff the right theory should ever be proclaimed, we shall know it by this tohen, thai 
it will solve many riddles, — Emerson. 




NEW YORK : 

FOWLER & WELLS CO., PUBLISHERS, 
753 BROADWAY. 

1880. 



X 



© % 



COPYRIGHT BY 

FOWLER & WELLS CO. 

1885. 



C. E. Martin, Printer, 
5 Clinton Place, New York, 



PREFACE. 



" Consistency is the seal of truth." 

The progress of Medical Reform has reached a stage which to 
all who can read the signs of the times is a sufficient pressage of 
its victory. Its exponents have obtained a hearing. The transi- 
tion period of the present age still struggles with the mist3 of the 
past, and thousands wander aimless from doubt to doubt ; but 
they have at least ceased to follow the ignus fatuus of the long 
night. A spirit of free inquiry is abroad ; the morning dawns, 
and light has ever been the ally of Truth. Scrutiny, even with 
the most hostile intent, has, indeed, never prevented the growth 
of a doctrine rooted in fact. For the laws of Nature, if read 
aright, reveal and confirm each other, and by just as much as 
perverse criticism succeeds in attracting the attention of honest 
inquirers, it will defeat its own purpose by leading to the dis- 
covery of additional evidence in behalf of Truth. "If the right 
theory should ever be discovered," says Emerson, "we shall 
know it by this token, that it will solve many riddles." 



% PREFACE. 

The mere announcement of a new truth has thus more than 
once led to its general recognition. It was in vain to legislate 
against the spread of the Copernican theory : the heavens refused 
to ratify the veto of the Inquisition. Newton's Principia and 
the doctrines of Evolution could dispense with the favor of 
critics. They prevailed by " solving many riddles," Nature, 
Logic and Experience, conspired to insure their triumph; in 
their theorems friend and foe found the solution of mysteries 
which other keys failed to unlock. The gospel of Natural 
Hygiene, too, can appeal to the evidence of that crucial test. 
The theory that disease is something essentially abnormal and 
can be cured by the adoption of less unnatural modes of living, 
cannot hope to avoid a conflict with the representatives of the 
drug interest, but its apostles have fulfilled the most important 
part of their mission since they succeeded in setting men 
a-thinking. Intelligent men, who for the first time were told 
that pulmonary diseases are not caused by the low temperature 
of the outdoor atmosphere, but by the vitiated condition of the 
indoor air — and could be easily cured without any drugs what- 
ever — men of even more than average intelligence might hesitate 
to adopt a view so glaringly at variance with the doctrines of the 
orthodox medicine-school. But on further reflection, they could 
not help being struck with the significant fact that consumption 
is a house-disease, a complaint attacking sheltered city-dwellers, 
and sparing the weather-beaten herder and hunter. They could 
not help reflecting on the import of the circumstance that a 
malady generally ascribed to cold should be so rare among the 
pastoral natives of Norway and North Scotland, and almost un- 
known among the Indian tribes of Northern Canada. With the 
best disposition of loyalty to the faith of their fathers, they could 
not help drawing inference of their own from the fact that 



PREFACE. 3 

Homceopathists and Sanitarians, with a minimum of medicine, 
or no medicine at all, cure all sorts of diseases more permanently, 
as well as quicker and easier — easier in the very degree that must 
suggest the suspicion that drugs would have complicated instead 
of reducing the evil. 

And, morover, such suspicions are strengthened by leading to 
personal experiments. No sophistry is apt to explain away the 
self-experienced fact that dietetic precautions will completely 
cure digestive complaints that defy the most elaborate com- 
pounds of the drug-store; that fevers which refuse to yield 
to " antiseptics " can be controlled by refrigeration; that 
outdoor exercise and sunshine will save city-children for whose 
ailments materia medica seemed to have no remedy. And 
there is an effective difference between the convictions of time- 
proved experience, and the result of momentary impressions. 
The dyspeptic who mistakes the effect of a stimulant-fever for 
a symptom of returning strength, may write a gushing testi- 
monial to the merits of his nostrum, but before his gratitude 
can exuberate in further efforts, its ardor is apt to be cooled 
by the discovery that the drug-forced excitement is always 
followed by a depressing reaction, leaving his torpid liver 
more torpid than before, and that he might as well have tried 
to cure the exhaustion of a weary traveller with a shower- 
bath of vitriol. But he who has found the clew of the maze 
which to thousands is a hopeless labyrinth of mystery and 
disappointment, must have lost a primary instinct of human 
nature, if he should fail to attempt the rescue even of his 
unwilling fellow-men, even of those who are deaf to the logic 
of science, but might be persuaded to trust the repeated testi- 
mony of their own senses. Quacks cannot appeal to constant 
experience. Sooner or later the load-stars of credulity will set 



4 PREFACE. 

in a mist; and if the present volume should fulfil the purpose 
of leading its readers into the safer path of inquiry, the result 
will not fail to justify the author's faith in the progressive 
power of Truth. 

FELIX L. OSWALD. 
Montvale Speings, August, 1885. 



CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER I. 



CONSUMPTION. 

Hygienic Instincts. The Safeguards of Nature. Disease a 
Re-constructive Process. The True Healing Art. Removal of 
the Cause. Pathological Delusions. Mischievous Interference. 
The Abuse of Drugs. Baneful Habits. Ignorance Rather than 
Vice the Chief Cause of Disease. Suggestive Statistics. Cold 
Air as an Antiseptic. Climatic Influences. Roughing It. The 
Pedestrian Cure. Hygienic Delusions. The Night-air Super- 
stition. Ventilatory Contrivances. Rain Shutters. City Air. 
Safest Season for City Life. Malnutrition. Correlation of 
Scrofula and Consumption. Dietetic Remedies. Dr. Zimmerman's 
Conjecture. Continence. Outdoor Exercise. The Mountain 
Cure 13 

CHAPTER II. 



DYSPEPSIA. 

Eupeptic Ancestors of the Human Race. Our Sins Against 
Nature. Dietetic Aberrations. First Symptoms of Indigestion. 
Warning Instincts. Self-delusions. Sham Remedies. The Influ- 
ence of " Tonic" Drugs. Poison Fevers. Nature's Ultimatum. 
Dyspeptic Children. Indigestion Complicated by Drugs. Physical 
Exercise. The Refrigeration Cure. Franklin's Prescription. 
Sponge Baths and Air Baths. Indoor Exercise. Best Diet 
for Convalescents. Vegetarianism. A Popular Misconception. 
Fruits vs. Potherbs. A Gluttony Cure. The One Meal System. 
Work after Dinner. Best time for Brain-work. Dietetic Reform. 

Adjuvant Remedies 52 

(5) 



6 CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER III. 

CLIMATIC FEVEES. 

Summer Diseases. Protective Climates. Immunities of the 
Higher Latitudes. Calorific Artifices. Fever Factories. Ple- 
thoric Diet. Superfluous Clothing. Midsummer Martyrdom. A 
Lesson from Nature. The Fever Secret. Suggestive Facts. 
Nature's Remedy. The Refrigeiation Cure. Yellow Fever. 
A Fatal Mistake. Cold Water vs. Quinine. Ice Air. The 
Spanish-American Plan. Disinfectants. Cooling and Heating 
Diet. A Mental Febrifuge. Will-force. The Sheriff of Cameron. 
Preventive Measures 79 

CHAPTER IV. 



The Brunonian Theory. "Asthenic Disorders." Want of Vigor 
a Cause of Disease. Asthma and its Presumptive Causes. Its 
Proximate Cause. Mental Excitement. The leteraction of Mind 
and Body. Incidental Causes. Over-Exercise. Nausea. Diet- 
etic Antipathies. Asthma Paroxysms. Conflicting Theories. 
Indirect Remedies. The Movement-Cure. Preventives. Avoid- 
ing Mental Excitement. Mynheer's Experience. Asthma 
Specifics. Narcotic Drugs. Dangerous After-Effects. Medical 
Prejudices. Dietetic Remedies. Effect of an Aperient Diet. 
Night-Asthma and its Best Preventives. Change of Air. Heroic 
Remedies. A Crucial Test. Remedial Instincts 104 

CHAPTERS V. and VI. 



THE ALCOHOL HABIT. 

Stimulants and the Origin of Their Abuse. The Poison-vice. 
Abnormal Development of the Stimulant Habit. Physiological 
Fallacies. Non-Stimulating Diet. Second Nature. Progressive 
Tendency of Unnatural Habits. The Secret of the Stimulant- 
vice. Modes of Propagation. Indirect Causes. Medical 



CONTENTS. 7 

Delusions. Supposed Necessity of Stimulation. Total Abstinence. 
Uselessness of Palliative Measures. Only Total Abstinence Easier 
than Temperance. Change of Diet. Adjuvant Remedies. Divert- 
ing Pastimes. Want of Better Amusements an Indirect Cause of 
Intemperance. International Statistics. Counter Passions. The 
Curable Stage of Alcoholism. Preventive Measures 122 

CHAPTER VII. 



ENTERIC DISORDERS. 

Drugs as a Cause of Disease. Poison Marasmus. A Social 
Curse. Drastic Drugs and Their After-effects. Constipation. 
Gastric Disorders. Baneful Delusions. Dietetic Abuses. The 
Essence Mania. Concentrated Food a Cause of Digestive Dis- 
orders. Kitchen Reform. Predisposing Causes of Constipation. 
Overheated Rooms. Sedentary Occupations. The Remedies of 
Nature. Abstinence and Fresh Air. Horseback Exercise. Cold 
Sponge-baths. Close Stools not always a symptom of Disease. 
Diarrhoea. Always a Morbid Symptom. The Fasting Cure. An 
Arabian Specific. Hunger and Exercise. Astringent Drugs and 
their Physiological Effects. Maw-worms. Dietetic Specifics. The 
Best Vermifuge. Removal of the Cause 159 

CHAPTER VIII. 



NERVOUS MALADIES. 

Hereditary Influences. Life under Abnormal Conditions. 
Stimulants and Sedentary Occupations. Narcotic Beverages 
Indoor Work. Want of Air and Sunshine. Want of Exercise. 
Nervousness a City Disease. Removal of the Cause. Manual 
Labor. A Spleen Specific. Engel's Advice. Mind and Body. 
Vitiated Humors. A Simple Cure. Palliatives and their Ulti- 
mate Effects. Radical Remedies. Dr. Boerhave's Conjecture. 
A Popular Misconception. Work a Condition of Health. Ad- 
juvant Remedies. Sun Baths. Solaria. Non-stimulating Diet. 
Vertigo and Heart-disease. Unexpected Causes. Black Tea. 
Sexual Excesses. Country Life 181 



CONTENTS. 
CHAPTER IX. 



OATAERH, PLETTEISY, CEOTJP. 

The Art of Diagnosis. Strange Delusions. The Catarrh 
Superstition. The Supposed Influence of Cold Air. The True 
Cause of Colds. Indisputable Evidence. The Persistence of 
Popular Prejudices. Cold Air and its Remedial Functions. 
Antiseptic Influence of a Low Temperature. Winter Life in 
the Adirondacks. Practical Tests. Outdoor Life and its Im- 
munities from Pulmonary Complaints. Mountain Guides. Dr. 
Page's Experiment. Catarrh Specifics. Exercise, Abstinence, 
and Fresh Air. "Chronic Catarrh." Caused by Chronic Abuses. 
Pleurisy and its Natural Cure. Dr. Jenning's Ordeal. Croup, 
its Cause and its Cure. Unventilated Bedrooms. Laryngitis. 
Contagious Disorders of the Respiratory Organs 195 

CHAPTER X. 



MISCELLANEOUS REMEDIES. 

Natural Anaesthetics. Rapid Breathing. Dr. Bonwill's Dis- 
covery. The Perils of Chloroform. Cold as a Pain-Obtunder. 
Ice Poultices. Apoplexy. Preventive Regimen. Burns and 
Scalds. Simple Sedatives. Chilblains. Dropsy. Caused by 
what Evils. Conditions of Cure. Emetics and their Harmless 
Substitutes. Epilepsy, Curable by Hygienic Treatment. Ex- 
coriation. Fainting Fits. Dr. Engleman's Case. Febrile 
Affections. Injudicious Remedies. Phlebotomy and its Out- 
rageous Abuses. Lord Byron's Fate. Gout. A Mechanical 
Specific. Headache and Heartburn. Their Gastric Causes. 
Hyponchondria. Burton's List of Remedies. Happiness and 
Health. Insomnia. Its Safest Cure. Mental Disorders. Kind- 
ness vs. Coercion. Outdoor Labor. The Tuscaloosa Plan. 
Weak Eyes and how to Strengthem Them. Scrofula and 
Rheumatism. Toothache. Hot Drinks. Animal Food a Cause 
of Caries. Permanent Remedies 215 



HOUSEHOLD REMEDIES. 



CHAPTER I. 

CONSUMPTION. 

The organism of the human body is a self-regulat- 
ing apparatus. Every interruption of its normal func- 
tions excites a reaction against the disturbing cause. 
If a grain of caustic potash irritates the nerves of the 
palate, the salivary glands try to remove it by an in- 
creased secretion. The eye would wash it off by an 
immediate flow of tears. A larger quantity of the 
same substance could be swallowed only under the 
protest of the fauces, and the digestive organs would 
soon find means to eject it. The bronchial tubes 
promptly react against the obtrusion of foreign sub- 
stances. The sting of an insect causes an involuntary 
twitching of the epidermis. If a thorn or splinter 
fastens itself under the skin, suppuration prepares the 
way for its removal. If the stomach be overloaded 
with food it revolts against further ingestion. 

These automatic agencies of the organism gener- 
ally suffice to counteract the disturbing cause, and the 
sensory symptoms attending the process of recon- 
struction constitute merely a plea for non-interfer- 
ence. The suppurating tissues push the thorn out- 



14 HOUSEHOLD KEMEDIES. 

ward, and resent only a pressure in the opposite di- 
rection. The eye volunteers to rid itself of the sand- 
dust, but remonstrates against friction. The rum- 
soaked system of the toper undertakes to eliminate 
the poison, and only asks that the consequences of 
the outrage be not aggravated by its repetition. But, 
if that plea remains unheeded, it finally takes the form 
of the emphatic protest we call disease. For, even in 
its urgent manifestations, the reaction against a vio- 
lation of Nature's health-laws is a cry for peace, rath- 
er than a petition for active assistance in the form of 
medication. "Accustom yourself in all your little 
pains and aches," says Dr. Jennings, " and also in 
your grave and more distressing affections, to regard 
the movement concerned in them in a friendly aspect 
— designed for and tending to the removal of a diffi- 
culty of whose existence you were before unaware, 
and which, if suffered to remain and accumulate, 
might prove the destruction of the house you live in 
— and that, instead of its needing to be 'cured/ it is 
itself a curative operation; and that what should be 
called disease lies back of the symptoms which, in fact, 
are made for the express purpose of removing the 
real disorder or difficulty" ("Medical Eeform," p. 310). 
Drugs can rarely do more than change the form of 
the disease, or postpone its crisis. Mercurial salve, 
which conscientious physicians have almost ceased to 
regard as a lesser evil of an alternative, was once a 
favorite prescription for all kinds of cutaneous dis- 
eases : it cleansed the skin by driving the ulcers from 
the surface to the interior of the body. A drastic 
purge counteracts constipation — for a day or two — by 



CONSUMPTION. 15 

inducing a still less desirable state of artificial dysen- 
tery. Combined with venesection the same "remedy" 
will suppress the symptoms of various inflammatory 
affections by compelling the exhausted system to post- 
pone the crisis of the disease; in other words, by in- 
terrupting a curative process. The best way to "as- 
sist" Nature in such cases is to give her fair play by 
forbearing to meddle with her restorative methods, 
and by removing the predisposing cause of the disor- 
der. Diseases plead for desistance, rather than for as- 
sistance, and the discovery of the cause is the dis- 
covery of the remedy. For there is a strong upward 
and healthward tendency in the constitution of every 
living organism : Nature's revenge is but an enforced 
condition of peace. Pain, discomfort, and even the 
premature loss of organic vigor, are the attendant symp- 
toms of a reconstructive process, and their permanence is 
a presuumptive proof that, in spite of such admonitions, 
that process is a struggle against a permanent obstacle, 
or against a constantly precated frustration of its efforts. 
To this self-regulating tendency of the living or- 
ganism, certain disorders (the lues veneris, prurigo, 
etc.) — probably due to the agency of microscopic par- 
asites — oppose a life-energy of their own, and have 
thus far resisted the influence of hy genie or non-med- 
icinal remedies. But, with that exception, it may be 
laid down as a general rule that the virulence and du- 
ration of every disease are proportioned to the de- 
gree and the contumacy of the provocation — a retri- 
bution proportioned to the degree of the guilt, we 
should say, if Nature did not administer her code af- 
ter the principle that ignorance of the law constitutes 



16 HOUSEHOLD REMEDIES. 

no excuse. The ignorant mother who, with the best 
intentions in the world, forces her child to sleep in 
an air-tight bed-room, incurs the penalties of an in- 
exorable law as surely as the vicious father who 
tempts his child to a life of infamy. 

In the aggregate, hygienic errors cause more mis- 
chief than hygienic recklessness ; and, if we would 
know the most baneful of those errors, we must in- 
quire after the cause of the most fatal disease. The 
alcohol-habit slays its thousands every year ; but sta- 
tistics prove that human life has a more terrible foe. 
The proportion of deaths from all diseases that can 
be ascribed to the effects of intemperance relates as 
three and a half to ten in Northern Europe, and as 
four to ten in the United States and Canada — to the 
mortality-rate of pulmonaey consumption. Without 
counting acute pneumonia and other fatal lung dis- 
eases, tubercular phthisis alone claims yearly one life 
out of 410 to 415 ; or an aggregate which, for the 
United States, has been estimated at 94,000 ; in Great 
Britain and Ireland, 110,000 (or one of every 300 in- 
habitants) ; in France, 80,000 ; in European Russia, 
105,000 ; in Northern Germany (including the Polish 
provinces of Prussia), 82,000. And the quantum of 
the mischief is still aggravated by its quality. Con- 
sumption fulfills no scavenger's mission : the most 
voracious is, withal, the most fastidious disease, and 
selects its victims from the most industrious classes 
of the noblest nations ; hard-working mechanics, de- 
voted supporters of large families, bread-winning la- 
borers and prize-winning students are its favorite 
victims. For the last fifty years its ravages have 



CONSUMPTION. 17 

steadily increased ; but the excess of the evil has 
finally revealed the means of deliverance, and the 
worst scourge of the human race has one redeeming 
feature : that its cause, and consequently its proper 
cure, have at last been determined with absolute cer- 
tainty. Not more than fifty years ago the consump- 
tion-problem was still crux medicorum; the disease 
seemed almost unaccountable and wholly incurable. 
Practical physicians had ascertained the value of cer- 
tain secondary remedies, the prophylactic influence 
of fat and phosphates (cod-liver oil, etc.), and of 
chest-expanding gymnastics ; but they had failed to 
recognize the great specific. Misled by the most 
prevalent of all popular delusions — the Cold-Air Fal- 
lacy*— -they ascribed consumption to the influence of a 
low temperature, and tried to cure it by sending their 
wealthier patients to a warmer climate and the poorer 
to an air-tight sick-room. There were hospitals for 
consumptives where invalids were nursed with a care 
that would have insured recovery from almost every 



* "Dry and intensely cold air preserves decaying organic tissues 
by arresting decomposition, and it would be difficult to explain how 
the most effective remedy came to be suspected of being the cause 
of tuberculosis, unless we remember that, where fuel is acessible, the 
disciples of civilization rarely fail to take refuge from exessive cold 
in its opposite extreme — an overheated, artificial atmosphere, and 
thus come to connect severe winters with the idea of pectoral com- 
plaints They avoid cold instead of impurity, just as tipplers, on 

a warm day, imagine that they would 'catch their death 1 by a 
draught from a cool fountain, but never hesitate to swallow the 
monstrous mixtures of the liquor- venders" ("Physical Education," 
p. 80 ; compare pp. 85, 98, and 248). 



18 HOUSEHOLD REMEDIES. 

other disease, but here all calculations were defeated 
by the result of one wrong factor ; the chief efficacy 
of the treatment was supposed to depend upon the 
exclusion of every draught of fresh air. 

But statistics have at last exploded that delusion. 
It was ascertained that consumption is essentially 
a house-disease. North or south, east or west, the 
death-rate from lung-diseases was found to bear an 
exact proportion to the percentage of the inhabitants 
habitually engaged in sedentary and in-door occupa- 
tions. Towns suffer more than the rural districts, 
cities more than country towns, manufacturing cities 
more than commercial and semi-agricultural cities, 
weaver-towns more than foundry-towns. "If a per- 
fectly sound man is imprisoned for life," says Baron 
d'Arblay, the Belgian philanthropist, " his lungs, as 
a rule, will first show symptoms of disease, and shorten 
his misery by a hectic decline, unless he should com- 
mit suicide." 

Moreover, it was shown that in non-manufacturing 
(uncivilized or pastoral) regions a low temperature 
seems to afford a protection against pulmonary dis- 
orders. Professor Jacoud found that, at an elevation 
of four thousand feet, the cold Alpine districts of 
Northern Savoy are almost free from lung-diseases. 
The medical statistics of the Austrian army have es- 
tablished the fact that recruits from the Tyrol, from 
Carinthia, and the Carpathians (Transylvania), i. e., 
from the highest, and consequently the coldest, prov- 
inces of the empire, enjoy a remarkable immunity 
from tubercular consumption. Dr. Hjaltelin, a resi- 
dent of Iceland, states that among the inhabitants of 



CONSUMPTION. 19 

that country pulmonary diseases are almost unknown. 
But in the temperate zone consumption-statistics 
alone would enable us to infer the amount of dust- 
breathing and in-door work incidental to the pursuit 
of each trade. In the Italian cities that have largely 
engaged in the production of textile fabrics, consump- 
tion has become as frequent as in Lancashire. Irre- 
spective of race-differences and special dietic habits, 
the habitual breathing of vitiated air leads to the de- 
velopment of pulmonary scrofula. And science has 
furnished the rationale of that result. Physiology has 
demonstrated that air is gaseous food, and respira- 
tion a process of digestion. The atmosphere fur- 
nishes the raw material of the pulmonary pabulum ; 
at each inspiration the organism of the lungs imbibes 
the oxygenous or nutritive principle of the air-draught, 
and excretes the indigestible elements. By breath- 
ing the same air over and over again, the atmospheric 
aliment becomes azotized, i. e., depleted of its life- 
sustaining principle, and therefore unfit to supply the 
wants of the animal economy. The continued inhala- 
tion of such vitiated air fills the respiratory organs 
with indigestible elements, which gradually accumu- 
late beyond the dislodging ability of the vital forces, 
and at last corrupt the tissue of the congested organ 
and favor the development of parasites. Consump- 
tion is one of the diseases that seem to confirm the 
tenets of the germ-theory. A tubercular diathesis 
favored by stagnant impurities of the circulatory sys- 
tem, by a warm and humid climate, and counteracted 
by cold air and other antiseptics. Six years ago a 
German physician demonstrated that the progress oi 



20 HOUSEHOLD BEMEDIES. 

pulmonary scrofula can be arrested by a pectoral in- 
jection of carbolic acid ; and one of his countrymen 
lately ascertained that the tubercle-virus is alive with 
microscopic parasites, that multiply like the spores of 
a prolific mushroom. The first development of these 
lung-devourers would seem to amount to a sentence . 
of speedy death; yet their fecundity hardly exceeds 
that of certain intestinal parasites, and the vis vitce 
has methods of her own for dealing with such foes, 
and is ever ready to begin the battle for life, on the 
sole condition that we do not complicate the difficul- 
ties of the undertaking by counteracting her efforts 
or by perpetuating the influnce of the original cause. 
Cease to feed the lungs with azotic gases, and Dr. 
Koch's animalcula will starve and disappear as surely 
as maw-worms will starve and disappear if we change 
a pork and sourcrout diet for bread and apples. 

About the comparative advantages of a dry and cold 
or moist and tropical climate, opinions are divided, 
with a preponderance of arguments in favor of the 
former ; but so much is certain, that in all latitudes 
of the temperate zone the disease known as pulmon- 
ary consumption is caused by the breathing of vitiated 
air and can be subduedhj out-door exercise. In cer- 
tain cases cured would be an ambiguous term. The 
respiration of vitiated (azotized and dust-impregnat- 
ed) air results in the corruption of the pulmonary tis- 
sues, and finally in a process of disintegration that 
fills the structure of the lungs with ulcerous cavities. 
These cavities often cicatrize, but it is not probable 
hat they can be entirely healed, i. e., that the wasted 
tissues can be reproduced. Yet in all but its last 



CONSUMPTION. 21 

stages the progress of the disease can be arrested by 
out-door life alone. The voice of instinct adds its 
testimony to the teaching of science. In the lan- 
guage of our senses, every feeling of discomfort sug- 
gests its own remedy. If the proximity of a glowing 
stove begins to roast your shins, the alarmed nerves 
cry out — not for patent ointments, not for anti-caustic 
liniments and "pain -killers," but for a lower tempera- 
ture. Nothing else will permanently appease them. 
Millions of prisoners, school-children, and factory- 
slaves, pine for lung-food as a starving man yearns 
for bread ; and that hunger cannot be stilled with 
cough-pills, but only with fresh air. 

There are adjuvant remedies which will be noticed 
hereafter, but their co-operation is not indispensable 
Without a sufficient supply of wholesome food, with- 
out warm clothes, without domestic comforts, under 
the disadvantage even of excessive hardships and 
protracted fasts, a three months' mountain-excursion, 
with or without tents, will cure all the symptons of 
the disease with the exception of an accelerated pulse 
and a panting respiration during active exercise. 
Canadian trappers who leave their supply-camp with 
a bad cough, get rid of it on the fifth or sixth day 
" out." They may get foot-sore, and, if game is 
scarce, hipped and homesick, but the feeling of hale- 
ness about the chest continues. Night-frosts do not 
affect it. Fatigues rather improve it. They may 
wake up with a feeling of frost-cramp from their chil- 
blain ed toes to their shivering knees, but the lungs 
are at ease ; no cough, no asthmatic distress, no 
stitch-like pains, no night-fever. An old campaigner 



22 HOUSEHOLD REMEDIES. 

would laugh at tlie idea of " colds " being taken in 
the open air. He knows that they germinate in close 
bedrooms and flourish in musty beer-shops, but van- 
ish in the prairie wind. If he is a government team- 
ster and sells his meat-rations for brandy, he may 
know that sun-heat and fire-water are burning his can- 
dle at both ends ; he may see trouble ahead, but he 
is sure that it will not come in the form of lung-trou- 
ble. Koch's lung-parasites do not thrive upon a fresh- 
air diet. 

After the tuberculous cachexy has once been subdued, 
a moderate daily dose of Nature's specific will suffice 
to maintain, or even to fortify, the recovered vantage- 
ground. A foot-trip across the continent would re- 
generate the respiratory organs, but even a stroll 
across the next meadow will be booked to our health 
account. The human organism is a savings-bank for 
the elements of vital strength, and in the form of 
fresh air it accepts the smallest deposits. In stress 
of circumstances, an hour per day of active exercise 
will help to keep the lungs catarrh-proof, and that 
hour may even be subdivided. Buy a large umbrella, 
and make it a rule to walk on your way to market, to 
your place of business, or to church ; or at least part 
of the way, if the distance is great and your time lim- 
ited. In the evening take a large satchel and go a mile 
out of your way to patronize a good fruit-dealer or a 
vender of old books, or fill the satchel at home and earn 
the blessings of a poor family in the factory-suburb. 
Street-rambles should have a proximate object ; the 
regulation -walk on general principles is too apt to be 
shirked on very slight pretexts. If you have a garden 



CONSUMPTION. 23 

of your own, fence off a digging corner and prospect 
for geological specimens. If you have a wood-shed, 
import an old stump-log (hickory preferred), and do 
not be too particular about keeping your axe sharp. 
Ventilate your office ; keep a stove and an overcoat in 
your workshop, and open the windows every now and 
then. Open the dining-room windows in the fore- 
noon and the kitchen-windows in the afternoon ; no 
force-ventilator can compete with the effect of a 
direct influx of atmospheric air. If you teach a class 
or work in a warehouse or counting-house, prevail 
upon the managers to ventilate the place during the 
dinner-recess, or else try to do your work in the airiest 
corner, near a window or near the door of a vacant 
side-room or hall. In ill- ventilated rooms the azote 
miasma has its centers of density that can be avoided 
with a little management. 

But at all events get rid of the night-air superstition, 
and enjoy the blessing of an airy bedroom — the 
luxury, I may add. A natural instinct may be sup- 
pressed, but needs but little encouragement to resume 
its normal functions, like a river returning to its 
ancient channel. Thus the fresh-air instinct. In 
families cursed with the night-air superstition, chil- 
dren are often fuddled with miasma till they prefer it 
to fresh air, and dislike to sleep near an open 
window. But, in a single month, that aversion 
can be changed into a decided predilection, till the 
cool breath of the night-wind becomes a chief condi- 
tion of a good night's rest, and the closing of the bod- 
room windows creates a feeling of uneasiness not un- 
like the discomfort induced by an attempt to sloop 



24 HOUSEHOLD EEMEDIES. 

with your head under the blankets. In the sleeping- 
dens of the French village-taverns, where, after Sep- 
tember, the window-sashes are actually nailed down, 
the children of a hygienic home would pine for a 
draught of oxygen as a sweltering traveler thirsts af- 
ter fresh water. 

Besides open windows, Dio Lewis recommends an 
open fire-place and a good wood fire all night ; but 
that is a matter of taste : an extra blanket will serve 
the same purpose, and the danger of damp bed- 
clothes* in winter has been as strangely exaggerated 
as have the perils of cold drinking-water in midsum- 
mer. 

In stormy nights a half-closed " rain-shutter " (a 
window-blind with broad bars) will keep the room 
perfectly dry without excluding the air. If the mer- 
cury sinks below zero, close every window in the 
house. Intense cold is a disinfectant, that purifies 
even the air of the hide-covered dungeons where the 
natives of the polar regions pass the long winter 
nights. In the dog-days, on the other hand, do not 
be satisfied with anything less than a thorough 
draught ; open every window in and around the bed- 
room. Consumption has been recognized as a zymo- 
tic disease, and sultry heat favors the development of 
all morbific germs. 

Where the prejudice against open windows has 



* "I shall not attempt to explain why damp clothes occasion 
cold, rather than wet ones, because I doubt the fact ; I imagine 
that neither the one nor the other contributes to that effect, and 
that the causes of ' colds ' are totally independent of wet, and even 
of cold" (Benjamin Franklin's Essays," p. 216). 



CONSUMPTION. 25 

been cured, the cold-air superstition often lingers in 
the form of a repugnance to out-door exercise in win- 
ter. After the last of October thousands of convales- 
ents suspend their morning rambles, and the hectic 
symptoms soon reappear. The aggravation of the dis- 
ease may scare the patients into a warmer climate, 
but most of them would rather breathe sick-room mi- 
asma than the winter air of a high latitude. 

The truth is, that the prophylactic influence of the 
out-door atmosphere depends less upon its temper- 
ature than upon its purity, and for the open-air treat- 
ment of lung-diseases, a cold, clear winter morning 
is more propitious than a dusty summer day. The 
contrast is shown in the effect. A single hour's exer- 
cise in the skating-ring, or under a snow-covered 
wood-shed, a sleigh-ride, a brisk walk through an 
ice-glittering park, will ease the respiratory organs 
more effectually than a week of languid rambles 
through the dust and heat of an Italian campagna. 

In larger cities, especially, a good frost defecates 
the lung-poisoning effluvia of the- slum-alleys, w T hile 
heat aggravates their offensiveness. In the cities of 
our Atlantic seaboard July is about the most un- 
fragrant month in the year, and August the dustiest. 
Soon after the summer solstice wealthy invalids 
should, therefore, pack their camping-gear for the 
Alleghany highlands, and arrange for their return by 
the end of October. Patrons of a transatlantic pass- 
enger-line had better go a month sooner, to avoid the 
midsummer night-mares of a superheated cabin. 
European tourists can combine the useful with the 
agreeable by doing their sight-seeing afoot ; but they 



26 HOUSEHOLD REMEDIES. 

should remember that Alpine morning breezes can 
not always neutralize the bedroom air of a South- 
German tavern, and that sultry heat aggravates the 
effects of mal-ventilation.* The German, Austrian, 
and Russian shepherds stay the whole summer with 
their flocks, but, as a class, are nevertheless remark- 
ably subject to pulmonary diseases, and for the fol- 
lowing reason : They pass the night in a Schafer-hutte, 
a sort of ambulance-box, eight feet by four, and six 
feet high, without windows, but with a tight-fitting 
sliding-door. This door the ill-advised proprietor 
shuts after dark, and breathes all night the azotized 
air of his Black Hole of Calcutta on wheels. In the 
morning he awakens with a hacking cough, super- 
added to a profuse perspiration and a feeling of nau- 



* "The rate of life, and consequently the amount of disintegra- 
tion, in any organized structure depend in great measure upon 
the temperature at which it is maintained ; and thus it happens 
that the production of carbonic acid from this source, at the ordi- 
nary rate of vital activity, is much more rapid in warm-blooded 
than in cold-blooded animals, and that the former suffer far more 
speedily than the latter from the privation of air. But, when the 
temperature of the reptile is raised by external heat to the level of 
that of the mammal, its need for respiration increases, owing to the 
augmented waste of its tissues. When, on the other hand, the 
warm blooded mammal is reduced, in the state of hibernation, to the 
level of the cold-blooded reptile, the waste of its tissues diminishes 
to such an extent as to require but a very small exertion of the 
respiratory process to get rid of the carbonic acid, which is one 
of its chief products. And in those animals which are capable of 
retaining their vitality when they are frozen, vital activity and 
disintegration are alike suspended, and consequently there is no 
carbonic acid to be set free" (Gurney Smith, " On Respiration"). 



CONSUMPTION*. 27 

sea. The air of the mountain meadows gradually re- 
lieves the other symptoms, but not the cough, which 
finally becomes chronic, and, with exquisite facilities 
for the attainmeut of a patriarchal longevity, the 
slave of the night-air superstition dies in the forenoon 
of his life. 

Mal-nutkition, combined with a tubercular diathe- 
sis, hastens the macerative (or "hectic ") stage of the 
disease. Air is gaseous food, and the body of an ill- 
fed man who stints his lungs in life- air is thus suf- 
fering under a compound system of starvation. Hence 
the occasional rapidity in the devolopment of tuber- 
cular consumption, and its frightful ravages in the 
homes of the poor, and in the stuffy tenements of 
French dress-makers and Silesian weavers, where a 
perpetual air-famine aggravates the want of bread. 

Fat is the best lung-food, and, among all fat-con- 
taining substances, fresh, sweet cream is about the 
best, and salt pork the worst. There is a close cor- 
relation between consumption and the various scrofu- 
lous affections , " pulmonary scrofula " is, indeed, 
sometimes used as a synonym of tuberculosis. The 
French physiologist Villemin found that in Guinea- • 
pigs, rabbits, and other animals, the symptoms of tu- * 
berculosis can be artificially produced by a repeated 
inocculation with scrofula virus, and in the children 
of scrofulous parents the inherited taint often leads 
to the development of a malignant form of tubercu- 
losis. Consumptives should therefore avoid all seor- 
butific articles of diet ; salt meat, pickels, indigesti- 
ble-made dishes, rancid fat, pungent spikes, choose 
and all kinds of intoxicating liquors. A predilection 



28 HOUSEHOLD REMEDIES. 

for such, diet is often encouraged by the circumstance 
that in the insipient stages of consumption it can be 
indulged without apparent inconvenience to the 
digestive organs. The victims of pulmonary disorders 
often enjoy an omniverous appetite. But they should 
not forget that their diseased lungs act as an absorbent 
of all morbid matter, and that the immunities of the 
digestive apparatus are purchased at the expense of 
the respiratory organs. 

Pathological conditions, involving an abnormal 
waste of tissue, require, indeed, an extra supply of 
nutritive aliments, and the patient may claim the 
right to indulge his appetite in regard to the quantity 
of his food, but he should earn that right by restricting 
himself in regard to the quality. His diet should be 
nutritious, non-stimulating, and slightly aperient ; 
the regulation of the quantum may be trusted 
to the promptings of Nature. The first full meal, 
however, should not be taken before the morning 
exercise. Those who are in the habit of wast- 
ing the energy of the day's prime on the digestion 
of a massive breakfast may palliate their craving with 
a glass of sweet milk, or a piece of brown bread dab- 
bed with treacle or cream. Fresh cream, Graham 
bread, honey, beans baked with butter instead of 
pork, and a liberal dessert of such fruit as sweet 
grapes, pears, strawberries, or stewed prunes at about 
1 p. M. At six or seven a similar meal ; for the sake 
of variety, perhaps buckwheat-cakes instead of bread, 
and apple-butter instead of honey. In point of quan- 
tity let the supper rival the dinner, with the proviso 
that the rules of the bed-room hygiene shall be duly 



CONSUMPTION. 29 

observed, for, if the vigor of the digestive organs is 
aided by a liberal supply of oxygen, it is a fallacy to 
suppose that the night is an unfavorable time for the 
assimilation of a hearty meal. Animals rest after re- 
pletion, and some of them never sleep till they have a 
good meal to digest. There is no doubt that after 
meals neither mental nor muscular exertion is favora- * 
ble to the performance of the organic functions which 
concur to effect the nutrition of the system. And, if 
the stomach can bear it, before going to bed an extra 
glass or two of sweetened cream may be taken — not 
as a food, but as a medicine. It is an established fact 
that fat counteracts a tuberculous diathesis. The in- 
habitants of the polar regions consume enormous 
quantities of non-nitrogenous food. Our negroes, to 
whom the climate of the United States must be semi- 
polar, loose no opportunity to gorge themselves with 
fat meat. The poor monkeys of our Northern me- 
nageries are ravenously fond of sweet milk and cream ; 
instinct teaches them that fat stifles tubercles. The 
dairy-districts of the chilly Netherlands enjoy a re- 
markable immunity from pulmonary diseases. San- 
dor Czoma, the Hungarian traveler, who passed sev- 
eral years in the highlands of Thibit, states that the 
Thibetan (Buddhist) monks prolong the lives of con- 
sumptives by heroic doses of clarified butter. 

The iEsculaps of the future will issue their almanacs 
with a list of household remedies. The knowledge of 
a few simple dietetic correctives would enable thou- 
sands to dispense with the use of costly patent medi- 
cines. Common sugar is an effective receipt for de- 
purating the morbid secretions of the air-pssages. 



30 HOUSEHOLD REMEDIES. 

It relieves hoarseness, and in bronchial affections 
alleviates the painful, dry cough, by loosening the 
phlegm and relaxing the stringency of the laryngeal 
muscles. Various kinds of sweet fruits share this 
property, and the most palatable form of the specific 
is perhaps the saccharine element of good layer- 
raisins. California raisins are now retailed at ten to 
twenty-five cents a pound, and half a pound of a 
medium quality can be warranted to afford as much 
relief as a dollar-bottle of the best cough-sirup. 
Besides, the demulcents of Nature induce no un- 
pleasant after-effect, while repeated doses of medicated 
sirup soon become nauseating. A quart of cold water, 
either pure or slightly sweetened, taken just before 
going to bed, is a pulmonary febrifuge, and a 
reliable preventive of night-sweats. It also pro- 
motes the easy breathing which to far-gone con- 
sumptives comes otherwise only after hours of trou- 
bled sleep. Dyspnoea, or want of breath, like dys- 
peptic asthma, can be greatly alleviated by an aper- 
ient diet : water-melons and buttermilk in summer, 
and baked beans, peas, or lentils, in winter. Com- 
bined with outdoor exercise, digestive correctives 
often afford permanent relief from the distress of asth- 
matic affections, for that dyspnoea does not necessa- 
rily indicate an irremediable waste of pulmonary tis- 
sue is proved by the fact that it often occurs and 
permanently disappears with the symptoms that char- 
acterize the transient affections of the upper-air pas- 
sages. 

Permanence of relief is the best criterion for the 
value of a remedial agent. The cathartics and alco- 



CONSUMPTION. 31 

holic stimulants of the old-school practitioners sup- 
pressed the symptoms of the disease, but the sup- 
posed relief was nothing but an interruption of a 
reconstructive process. While the vital forces were 
fighting the battle of life against the chronic enemy, 
we obliged them to suspend their efforts in that direc- 
tion, in order to meet a more imminent danger at an- 
other point ; for Nature can fight only one disease at 
a time. If an asthmatic person is seized with a cli- 
matic fever, the respiratory trouble is temporarily 
suspended : Nature, as it were, postpones the asthma- 
case in order to give her undivided attention to the 
fever-affair. Fever and ague give way to small-pox, 
a drunken man can be "sobered up " by an heroic 
dose of arsenic, and intoxication relieves the pangs 
of neuralgia, gout, and rheumatism — for a day. 
But, at the end of the day, the mal-exorcised demon 
returns with seven accomplices, and Nature has to re- 
sume the original struggle with diminished chances 
of success — shorn of just as much strength as she 
had to expend in combating the additional enemy. 
The exorcist then repeats his dose, but finds that he 
has to increase the quantum : the exhausted system 
at last ceases to react against the provocation, and 
in order to obtain temporary relief the patient must 
resort the stronger and stronger stimulants. 

There is a more excellent way : trust in the wisdom 
of Nature, and a careful husbanding of the vital forces 
— by continence, for instance. Sexual excesses, 
combined with mal-nutrition, are such potent allies 
of pulmonary consumption that Dr. Zimmermann 
calls tubercles "Thranen der Armuth inn! Rene nach 



32 HOUSEHOLD REMEDIES. 

innen geweint" ("tears of poverty and repentance 
wept inward"). That dreadful disease known as 
"galloping consumption" often results from the co- 
operation of the three chief enemies of the human 
organism: impure air, intemperance, and incontin- 
ence. The causes of all violent (or painfully sup- 
presed) mental emotions should also be avoided. 
Give gambling-houses a wide berth. Deprecate 
quarrels, especially with superiors. Suppressed wrath 
has often resulted in fatal haemorrhages. Consump- 
tives need all the sleep they can get, and must abstain 
from night-work and nocturnal revels. They should 
also avoid crowded assemblies, not because of the ex- 
citement and the temptation to late hours only, but 
on account of the danger of infection. For con- 
sumption is a contagious disease, though not in the 
conventional sense of the word. The matter is this : 
the germs of tuberculosis have no direct effect on the 
respiratory organs of a healthy person, though cases 
are on record where the constant breathing of a 
tainted atmosphere has communicated the disease 
from husbands to wives, or from patients to nurses. 
But, after a tubercular diathesis has once been fairly 
developed, the diseased lungs become extremely sen- 
sitive to the contagion of all pulmonary diseases ; the 
tubercle-seeds, as Dr. Koch's theory would explain it, 
fall upon a receptive soil — the sores of the half -healed 
vomicce. Dr. Koch, of Breslau, traced the propagative 
principle of the tubercle-virus to the development of 
microscopic animalcula, and I predict that similar 
parasites will yet be • discovered in the morbid secre- 
tions of the upper air-passages. This sensitiveness 



CONSUMPTION. 33 

continues after the idiopathic symptoms of the dis- 
ease have been brought well under control ; and ob- 
servation would show that a ten minutes' interview 
with a sufferer from catarrh, or a short visit to a read- 
ing-room, where swollen-faced children are hacking 
and coughing, suffices (often before the end of the 
first day) to prove the contagiousness of those affec- 
tions. 

But if the danger is recognized in time, the virus 
can be worked off by out-door exercise. Catarrhs can 
thus be nipped in the bud. I speak from personal 
experience : I have tried the experiment at all times 
of the year, and always with the same result, even in 
one case where my plan of operation involved a ten 
hours' march across a snow-covered mountain-range. 
I reached the camp foot-sore and almost feverish with 
exhaustion ; but the catarrh, too, had exhausted its 
resources, and the next morning I awakened with half 
healed feet and whooly-cured bronchi. One day of 
pedestrian fatigues had saved me two weeks of pul- 
monary distress. 

Next to fresh air, active excercise is the best pro- 
phylactic : 

"Dem Athleten wircl vergeben 
Was der Schwachling theuer biisst." 

By stimulating the action of the circulatory system, 
gymnastics promote the elimination of morbific mat- 
ter; disease-germs are removed before they have time to 
take root. Every gymnastic apparatus is worth dozens 
of patent medicines ; the beneficial eftect of the 
"movement-cure" is permanent, as well as safe and 
prompt, The five gymnastic specifics for pulmonary 



34 HOUSEHOLD REMEDIES. 

disorders are dumb-bells, Indian-clubs, long-bandied 
oars, spears, and a grapple-swing. Ger-werfen, or 
spear-throwing, is a popular pastime of the Turner- 
Hall. The missile is a javelin of some tough wood, 
about ten feet long and as thick as a common axe- 
handle. It terminates either in an iron lance-head, 
or in a brass knob, to keep the wood from splintering. 
A rough-hewed log-man, with a movable head, forms 
the target, and the problem is to decapitate the figure 
from a distance of about twenty paces for tyros and 
forty for veteran lancers. The shock of the throw ex- 
pands the chest, and has a magical influence on the 
stitch -like pains of a lingering pleuritic affection. It 
is a mechanical anaesthetic for all kinds of pulmonary 
disorders. The grapple-swing consists of a pair of 
iron (leather-covered) rings, suspended at a height of 
about four feet from the floor, and affords opportuni- 
ties — if not facilities — for a great variety of acrobatic 
exercises. The complex evolutions are somewhat 
arduous, but even the simplest use of the contrivance 
— swinging to and fro like a pendulum — exerts a 
mitigating influence on the strictures of the respira- 
tory organs, dyspnoea, and asthmatic troubles. Faute 
de mieux, trundling a wheelbarrow, with a gradual in- 
crease of the load, chopping or sawing wood, or grub- 
bing out stumps with a mattock, is worth ship-loads 
of cough-sirup, though it is doubtful in what degree 
the individual predilections of the patient might bias 
his choice. 

But people of means and leisure can remove that 
doubt by making out-door exercise pleasant enough 
to be preferable to any drug ; and, the following plan 



CONSUMPTION. 35 

would combine, under the most favorable conditions, 
the best atmospheric, gymnastic, and dietetic remedies 
for the disorders of the respiratory organs. 



CHAPTEE II. 



THE MOUNTAIN-CURE. 

Carbonic acid, the lung-poisoning residuum of res- 
piration and combustion, is heavier than the atmos- 
pheric air, and accumulates in low places — in wells, in 
cellars, in deep, narrow valleys, etc. — and often min- 
gles with the malarious exhalations of low, swampy 
plains. On very high mountains, on the other hand, 
the air becomes too rarified to be breathed with im- 
punity. It accelerates the respiratory process, as the 
amount of air inhaled at one inspiration does not 
contain oxygen enough to supply the wants of the 
organism at the ordinary rate of breathing, and is 
therefore especially distressing to diseased (wasted) 
lungs, whose functions are already abnormally quick- 
ened, and cannot be further stimulated without over- 
straining their mechanism. 

In the temperate zone, the purest and at the same 

time most respirable air is found at an elevation of 

about four thousand feet above the level of the sea, 

an altitude corresponding to the midway terraces of 

(36) 



CONSUMPTION. 37 

the European Alps and the average summit regions 
of our Southern Alleghanies. The broad table lands 
of the Cumberland Range are several hundred feet 
above the dust* and mosquito level. Between the 
thirty-fourth and thirty-sixth degrees of north lati- 
tude the elevated plateaus have the further advantage 
that their climate equalizes the contrasts of the sea- 
son : it mitigates the summer more than it aggravates 
the winter. Southerly winds predominate, and melt 
the snow with the same breezes that cool the midsum- 
mer weeks, for in the dog-days the Mexican table- 
lands are considerably cooler than our Northern 
prairie States. In the Alps of North Carolina, 
Tennessee, and Northern Georgia land and labor are 
so cheap that even people of moderate means can 
build a sanitarium of their own. It has been often 
observed that the moral effect of a residence at a 
place where consumptives congregate is not favorable 
to the cure of the disease ; and, moreover, a private 
establshment lessens the danger of contagion. The 
cheapness of living may be inferred from the fact that 
at the Chalybeate Springs of Benton, Tennessee, 
where board-rates vary from fifty to sevent}^-five cents 
a day, the visitors from the surrounding country 
towns, nevertheless, prefer to board on the co-opera- 
tive plan : the proprietor of a kitchen-garden fur- 
nishes vegetables, a stock-farmer fresh meat, the 



* While the treeless plateaus of the Pacific slope arc in a chronic 
state of sand and haziness. In Southern Colorado, too, every high 
wind shrouds the mountains in whirls of a kind of sand-dusl that 
can be felt under the eyelids and between the teeth. 



38 HOUSEHOLD REMEDIES. 

owner of a carriage free transportation, and every 
family lias a little cottage of its own. Summer-guests 
who come to drink mountain air can build their 
cabins wherever they find a convenient plateau, and 
contract with the next farmer for all the comestibles 
they may need in addition to their canned provisions. 
They can cook at their own fire place. A log-house can 
be made as airy as any tent, and is out and out more 
comfortable. A rough-hewed porch-roof, projecting 
like the veranda of a Swiss chalet, will keep the cabin 
both dry and airy ; square holes in the center of each 
wall can serve as windows in fine weather, and during 
a storm can be shut with a sliding-board. Between 
May and November the winds in the Southern Alle- 
ghanies come from the south or southwest, nine days 
out of ten, and in order to get the full benefit of the 
pure air, the house should face one of the thousand 
promontories of the southwestern slope that rises in 
terraces from the "Piedmont counties" of North 
Carolina and Northern Georgia, with a free horizon 
toward the plains of the Gulf coast. Have the door 
on the south side, and keep it wide open all night, as 
well as the windows or louvres in the opposite wall. 
If the windows do not reach to the ground, spread 
your bedclothes upon a hurdle-bedstead rather than 
on the floor, in order to enjoy every afflatus of the 
night-breeze. Night and day one can thus breathe 
mountain airs that have not been tainted by the touch 
of earthly things since they left the pine forests of 
the Mexican Sierras. Every inspiration is a draught 
from the fountain-head of the atmospheric stream. 
There is no need of living on oiled sardines where 



CONSUMPTION. 39 

the brooks are full of speckled trout. Those who 
must break the commandment of Brahma (and the 
highland air confers certain immunities), may devour 
their humble relatives in the form of wild-turkeys, 
quails, and opossums ; but the products of the vegeta- 
ble kingdom are cheap, and diversified enough to make 
up a tolerable menu. Sweet potatoes at twelve cents a 
peck, string beans fifteen, green peas twenty-five; 
strawberries ten cents a quart, roasting-ears a cent a 
piece, brown beans a bushel for one dollar — Dalton 
(Georgia) market-prices. " Semi-annual " comestibles 
in proportion ; eggs eight cents a dozen, butter twenty 
cents a pound in mid- winter, and ten cents in summer. 
Milk is a drug in the market ; a good milch-cow 
can be hired for a dollar a month, a cow boy for two 
dollars and his board. Whortleberries are sold at 
five cents a quart, but the pleasure of picking them is 
worth a great deal more. The lamest and weakest 
can join in that sport, for the shrub attains a height of 
three feet, and thus saves one the trouble of stooping. 
About an hour after breakfast the colony (or f amity) 
should muster for out-door exercise. The choice be- 
tween the various opportunities for entertaining work 
is the only difficulty, for Nature has provided them in 
embarrassing profusion. Expert bee-hunters can find 
four or five hive-trees in a single day. The chesnut- 
forests of the upper ridges are full of squirrels, and 
with a dog, a sack, and a good axe, it is not difficult 
to catch one alive, and turn it over to the quarter- 
master of the pet-department. Climbing trees is an 
exercise that brings into action nearly every muscle 
of the human body, and like the mal de rnonte, tHe 



40 pOUSEHOLD REMEDIES. 

shudder that seizes the traveler at the brink of Alpine 
precipices, the dizziness that takes away the breath, 
returns it with interest and is a mechanical asthma- 
cure. Entomologists may combine the gratification 
of their mania with useful exercise by rolling logs in 
quest of big-horn beetles. Log-rolling and tumbling 
rocks from the tops of projecting cliffs is the spice of 
life in the engineering enterprises which a campful 
of male North Americans are sure to set afloat — as en- 
larging the entrance of a cave, constructing a graded 
trail to the next spring, to the next wagon-road, or to 
a favorite lookout point. Enterprises of that sort in- 
volve a good deal of grubbing and chopping, but also 
many interesting discoveries — geological specimens, 
an unknown chrysalis, new varieties of ferns and 
mosses. As the work progresses it becomes a pastime 
rather than a task, and novices feel inclined to agree 
with Engineer Spangenberg, that "with a little man- 
agement a first-class railroad can be built to any point 
of the continent earth. " There is no cliff that cannot 
be circumvented or terraced. "With a slight curve in 
the road an apparent obstacle can be utilized as a bul- 
wark. In fallen trees the removal of a few side- 
branches develops revolving faculties. A pickaxe 
makes a whole wilderness plastic. 

The summer air of the highlands makes out-door 
life a luxury, but the chief advantage of the plan is 
this : The stimulus of a pleasant pastime enables a 
man to beguile himself into about ten times as much 
exercise as he could stand in the Turner-hall. The 
visitors of a hygienic gymnasium take their turn at 
the horizontal bar as they would swallow the drugs 



CONSUMPTION. 41 

of a public dispensary : they know that it is a lesser 
evil, they know that the road to Styx is the alterna- 
tive, they intend to come every day, but the intolerable 
tedium of the crank- work exercise soon shakes that 
resolution. The motive for exertion is too abstract; 
it lacks the charm of progressiveness and the stimulus 
of a proximate, tangible, and visible purpose. The 
sham competition of a regiment of invalids under the 
command of a turn-master does not much sweeten 
the bitter broth ; it is still crank-work, minus the club 
of the jailer, and nine out of ten hygienic gymnasts 
will soon find or make a pretext for discontinuing their 
visits. How many out of a hundred pupils of a young 
ladies' seminary would dream of performing their 
" callisthenics " at home ? They would as soon walk 
on all-fours, or ride on a dry clothes-line. But arrange 
a May-day picnic in the mountains, and they will beat 
a kid in climbing up the steepest rocks, and swing on 
wild grape-vines for hours together. 

It is likewise certain that fatigues can be far better 
borne if the body is not encumbered with a surplus 
of calorific clothes. A pair of linen trousers, a flan- 
nel hunting-shirt, and a loose necktie, make the most 
hygienic summer dress. In the afternoon remove the 
necktie and roll up the shirt sieves : it can do no harm 
to imbibe fresh air by all available means, and let the 
cutaneous lungs share in the luxury. Nor is there any 
excuse for the wide-spread fallacy that it is danger- 
ous, even in the most sweltering nights, to remove 
the bed-blankets. Kick them into the farthest cor- 
ner if they become too warm and sleep in your shirt 
and drawers, or under a linen bed sheet. Half-naked 



42 HOUSEHOLD REMEDIES. 

lazzaroni sleep the year round on the stone terrace 
of the Museo Borbonico and outlive the asthmatic 
burghers in their sweat-bos dormitories. The body 
effects part of its breathing through the pores. 
Painting a man with yellow ochre and copal-varnish 
would kill him as surely as hanging by the neck. The 
confined air between the skin of the body and a stra- 
tum of heavy blankets gets gradually surcharged with 
carbonic acid — in warm weather even to the verge of 
the saturation-point. The perspiration is thus forced 
back upon the body ; and the lungs — perhaps already 
weakened by disease — have to do double work. 

Hunters may find it hard to return in time for din- 
ner, and need a rallying signal. One P. M. is a good 
time for a general shouting-match. Wake the echoes 
of the old mountains ; the spirits of the departed 
Cherokees are tolerant — offer a premium for the 
loudest and ghastliest war -hoop, and depend upon it 
that no pulmonary disaster will spoil the triumph of 
the victor. Blood-vessels are not ruptured in that 
way, but by sudden movements or abrupt ejaculations, 
when terror or a similar emotion has driven the blood 
back upon the heart. But, while the mind is at ease, 
and the lungs not strained by a desperate exertion of 
the pectoral muscles, I would defy a consumptive to 
yell himself into a haemorrhage. A vocal effort does 
not injure the respiratory organs ; on the contrary, it 
strengthens them. Statistics show that lecturing and 
preaching savants outlive their graphic colleagues. 
In Carrollton, near New Orleans, I knew a hectic old 
Mexican banana-vender who was so short of breath 
that he had often to clutch the legs of his chair in his 



CONSUMPTION. 43 

dire struggles for life-air, and who told me that every 
few days or so he had to hitch up his market- wagon, 
and bawl out his wares at the top of his voice, and for 
hours together — in order to ease his lungs. Instead of 
speaking in a whisper, consumptives should envy 
cattle-drivers, whose busines gives them a plausible 
pretext for yelling. 

The prejudice against after-dinner speeches is 
founded upon a more valid reason. Rest, mental and 
physical, is really a prime condition of a thorough 
digestion. Invalids, especialy, need a liberal siesta, 
and a two hours' nap in the shade of a shelving rock 
can do no harm. Long, sultry afternoons, though, 
are unknown in the highlands, and before 3 P. M. the 
air will again be cool enough for any kind of out- 
door sport. If the spring needs cleaning out, a 
wheelbarrow full of flat rocks from the next creek will 
turn it into a deep, limpid brimnen, where a pail can 
be filled at a single dip. On sunny days butterfly- 
hunters may bag their game on every mountain 
meadow. Grasshoppers can be flushed by the dozen, 
and make the best bait for brook-trout. The rock- 
benches at the water's edge would invite to a pro- 
longed session if other pastimes were not too tempting 
and numerous. There are raspberries and muscadines 
in the brake ; farther up the woods are strewed with 
chestnuts, and the collector soon learns to find the 
little dells where they accumulate, like nuggets in the 
cavities of a California gold creek. 

It is astonishing how work of that sort makes the 
hours vanish, together with many evils which tedium 
is apt to aggravate : languor, spleen, and dull head- 



44 HOUSEHOLD REMEDIES. 

ache. But more wonderful yet is its effect on the 
disorders of the respiratory organs. Under anything 
like favorable circumstances the lungs are, indeed, 
the most curable part of the human body. With 
every inspiration the balm of pure air can be brought 
into contact with the thousand times thousand air- 
cells of the respiratory apparatus,* and, as we breathe 
about twenty times per minute, the panacea can be 
applied twenty-seven thousand times in twenty-four 
hours. Every day six hundred and eighty cubic feet 
of gaseous food circulates through the lungs of a full- 
grown man, carrying nourishment and restoratives to 
every fiber, and enabling it to rid itself of its morbid 
excretions. The rapidity of the remedial process has 
more than once forced upon me the thought, "What 
persistent outrages against the health laws of Nature 
must it have required to make the lungs the seat of a 
chronic disease !" 

The mountain-cure remedies assist Nature only in 
an indirect way, but before the end of the first week 
the breathing power of the asthmatic lungs will revive 
as seeing and hearing awaken after a trance. The 
respiration is still short and quick, but becomes less 
and less laborious ; the patient need not gasp for air ; 
his lungs have resumed business, and attend to all the 
details of its functions till it becomes entirely auto- 
matic. 



* "It has been calculated by M. Rouchoux that as many as 
17,790 air-cells are grouped around each terminal bronchus, and 
that their total number amounts to not less than 600,000,000"— 
Carpenter's "Physiology," p. 507. 

s 



CONSUMPTION. 45 

Expectoration becomes less frequent ; the source of 
the affection seems to retreat upward, the sputa come 
from the upper air-passages, and without the pre- 
liminaries of a worrying cough. Their quantity 
gradually diminishes, and the relief is permanent, 
while cough-medicines loosen the phlegm only by 
increasing its quantum, and discharging it with a tide 
of artificial mucus. 

The night-sweats, too, soon disappear, for they can 
be cured on the similia similibus principle of the 
homoeopathists — by day-sweats. Put on a flannel 
shirt, get an old axe and try your luck with a good- 
sized bee-tree, or with the old log that obstructs the 
trail. Keep a tin cup about you, and assist Nature 
by frequent trips to the spring. No matter if you 
have to change your flannel shirts four times a day ; 
depend upon it that you will not need them at night. 
The hectic fever abates ; the cause has been re- 
moved. The sweats as well as the fever are induced 
by a pulmonary inflamation that increases the tem- 
perature of the body, but can be relieved by giving it 
a chance to elminate the morbid matter. The four or 
five quarts of water that were excreted in the process 
of perspiration have circulated through every pore 
of the respiratory organs and depurated them more 
effectively in a single day than the repeated doses of 
a cough-exciting nostrum could do in a week. After 
the return from the mountains to the city (not before 
November, if possible) the occasional recurrence of 
the trouble will generally be limited to the rainy 
weeks of the first month, for the antipyretic influence 



46 HOUSEHOLD KEMEDIES. 

of cold, clear weather rivals that of the perspiration- 
cure. 

The danger of a haemorrhage is generally passed 
when the cessation of purulent expectorations proves 
that the disease has become non-progressive, and that 
the ulcers begin to cicatrize. Hemoptysis, or blood- 
vomiting, is the only symptom of their disease which 
is liable to shake the characteristic hopefulness of 
consumptives. It generally frightens them consider- 
ably ; they are apt to protest against out-door pro- 
ceedings, and speak with bated breath, under the 
(erroneous) impression that a vocal effort has somehow 
induced the trouble. It can do no harm to humor 
that disposition ; but keep the patient on his legs — 
lying down flat on his back after a heavy haemorrhage 
is almost sure to bring on a relapse before the end 
of twenty-four hours. For the first three or four 
hours walk slowly up and down, try to keep up 
a deep and calm respiration, and, if possible, take 
the first nap in a sitting posture — propped up 
with cushions and pillows. At the end forty-eight 
hours the danger is past, and out-door exercise may 
be gradually resumed. 

For stubborn Dyspncea (want of breath) there is a, 
somewhat heroic but almost infallible palliative, though 
I own that the rationale of its efficacy is somewhat 
undefined— artificial insomnia. Read or write as long 
as that will keep you awake ; after midnight walk up 
and down the room for fear of falling asleep in the 
chair, and toward morning, when drowsiness becomes 
irresistible, go to bed for a few hours, and that they 
will be passed in peaceful sleep can generally be in- 



CONSUMPTION. 47 

ferred from the circumstance that by that time the 
dyspnoea has disappeared. After the second night's 
vigils the trouble is not apt to recur for a month or 
so. But, unless the distress is utterly unbearable, or 
the necessity for prompt recuperation very urgent, 
it is, on the whole, better to eschew palliatives and 
rely on the only permanent asthma-cure — the gradual 
but normal invigoration of the whole system. 

In chbonic catarrh — a frequent concomittant of a 
tubercular diathesis — the obstruction of the nasal 
ducts by accumulated mucus yields in a day or two 
to any exercise that brings into play the muscles of 
the neck, shoulders, and chest, such as shouldering a 
good-sized log, walking bolt upright with two large 
pails full of water, or a loaded wheelbarrow. A very 
simple household remedy is a palliative to the same 
effect: hot water applied to the palms of the hands 
and the soles of the feet. It affords immediate though 
often only temporary relief ; for the diathermal influ- 
ence of the hot-water treatment, as it were, dries up, 
and thus temporarily reduces the mucous accumula- 
tion, while the preferable exercise-cure more gradu- 
ally but permanently removes the cause of the trou- 
ble. 

The stitch-like pain in the chest is apt to recur with 
every catarrh, and forms, indeed, only an incidental 
concomitant of tubercular consumption. It is a pleu- 
ritic affection, and is often entirely wanting in cases 
that end with death by tubercular cachexia. The 
Calmuck Tartars, who defile the air of their family 
tents with tobacco-smoke and suffer the usual conse- 
quences, cure pleuritic inflammation by a simple 



48 HOUSEHOLD EEMEDIES. 

method of inunction : viz., by fomenting the nape and 
chest with hot mutton-tallow. When loss of appetite 
indicates a derangement of the digestive organs, oint- 
ments may be used as a temporary substitute for a 
demulcent diet. 

Dropsical swellings, chronic diarrhoea, with frequent 
chills, prove that the disease has reached the colli qua- ' 
tive or hopeless stage of its development. But, even 
under such circumstances, the mountain-cure, in the 
form of moderate exercise in the pure air of a high- 
land sanitarium, will confer at least the negative ben- 
efit of saving the patient from the horrors preceding 
the last act of a hospital tragedy — it will insure an 
anaesthetic conclusion of the disease ; the vital strength 
will ebb away in a painless deliquiicm. 

But while the vital forces still keep the foe at bay, 
i. e., before the symptoms of the decline have assumed 
the chronic form, before the process of digestion be- 
comes utterly deranged, before the impoverishment 
of the blood results in dropsy and a livid discolora- 
tion of the lips, while the patient has intervals of 
sound sleep and sound appetite, and strength enough 
left to walk a couple of miles — there is more than an 
even chance that the disease can be permanently 
cured. One memento only of its ravages will remain 
— the acceleration of the breathing-process whenever 
the convalescent engages in active exercise. But even 
that inconvenience can be diminished by a system of 
training that will gradually inure the lungs to the 
strain of the ordinary movements and exertions of 
daily life : namely, by walking up-hill (or upstairs) 
with a load of daily increasing weight. After two 



CONSUMPTION. 49 

months or so it will take two scuttles full of coal to 
produce the panting and gasping- which used to result 
from a small pailful of water, and the mere weight of 
the body will seem barely sufficient to indicate the 
difference between a rough mountain-road and a 
graded pike-road. 

A few years ago an emaciated Canadian miner came 
South for his health, and located a small placer-claim 
on the plateau of the " Fort Mountain," in Murray 
County, Georgia. The mountain is a mile high, and 
the up-trip with a few dozen eggs from the next val- 
ley farm obliged the miner to stop every few minutes 
to keep his chest from bursting, but before the end 
of the year he was able to make the same trip, with- 
out a stop, with a bushel-bag full of corn-meal. The 
waste from the corrosions of the tubercle-virus can 
perhaps never be repaired, but the healthy tissue of 
the remaining portion of the lung is susceptible both 
of expansion and invigoration. The lungs expand 
and contract with the chest. If three sisters marry 
on the same day— the first a ferryman, and learns to 
row a boat ; the second a tailor, and takes to tight 
lacing ; the third a grocer, and tends his shop — an 
autopsy would show that in twenty years after their 
separation the ferrywoman's lungs have grown fifty 
per cent, larger than shopkeeper's, and fully twice as 
large as the dressmaker's. 

But few consumptives ever outgrow the sensitive- 
ness of their lungs, and must beware of contagion, 
avoid crowded meetings and lectures, and rather of- 
fend Mrs. Grundy than prolong their visits to a ca- 
tarrh infected house. Thoroughly healed though re- 



50 HOUSEHOLD REMEDIES. 

duced lungs (reduced often two-thirds of their original 
size) will perform their functions in a sufficient man- 
ner for a long series; of years. With the above-named 
precautions and a nutritive but strictly non-stimulat- 
ing diet, there is no reason why a convalescent from 
pulmonary scrofula in its most unmistakable form 
should not enjoy an out-door festival in honor of his 
eightieth birthday. It is well known that in the de- 
liquium of pulmonary consumption, in the stage of 
violent haemorrhages and dropsical swellings, the con- 
fidence of the patient often gives way to gloomy fore- 
bodings — the harbingers of the long night that never 
fails to cast its shadows before. But this despondency 
is not more significant than the hopefulness that pre- 
cedes it. For I believe that instinct is right in both 
cases, and that in the first stages of its development 
consumption is really the most curable of all chronic 
diseases. Chateaubriand, Heinrich Voss, Count Stol- 
berg, Alfieri, Francis Deak, and Dr. Zimmermannt, 
were descended from consumptive parents, but re- 
deemed their constitutions by traveling and out-door 
exercise, and attained to a more than average long- 
evity. Goethe, in his younger years, was subject to 
hectic fevers, with frequent haemorrhages, but re- 
covered and died an octogenarian. 

A tendency to emaciation, the most characteristic 
symptom of tuberculosis, generally continues to coun- 
teract the normal effects of a liberal diet, even com- 
bined with continence and a tranquil mode of life ; 
but the limitation of that tendency is a sufficient guar- 
antee that the disease has become non-progressive. 
But there is a still surer criterion ; consumptives are 



CONSUMPTION. 51 

generally remarkably fair and smooth skinned. The 
reason is, that the dross of the cachectic system gravi- 
tates toward the diseased lungs. An East-Indian 
surgeon found that small-pox can be localized by rub- 
bing the chest with croton oil, and thus concentrating 
the eruption. Pulmonary consumption is a kind of 
centralized scrofula. Two hundred years ago, when 
the cutaneous form of the disease was more frequent 
surgery was often invoked to remove ulcers that 
threatened to disfigure the patient or destroy his eye- 
sight. The approved method was to produce an ar- 
tificial and larger sore, where it could not do so 
much harm, on the arm, below the chin, or on the 
nape of the neck. The larger sore attracted the mor- 
bific matter ; and thus healed the smaller one. For 
cognate reasons, a scrofulous affection of the respira- 
tory organs acts, as it were, as a cosmetic. Pimples 
disappear ; boils head at once, and without suppura- 
tion ; intemperance, surfeits, a congenital taint of 
scrofula, do not affect the color of the face ; and (ex- 
cepting the effect of gross dietetic abuses, which ulti- 
mately react on the lungs) the cutaneous excretion 
of such impurities is therefore not an unfavorable 
symptom. For their reappearance on the surface of 
the body proves that the respiratory organs have 
ceased to attract the cachectic humors of the system ; 
in other words, that the tubercle-sores have cicatrized, 
and the lung-destroying virus has been eradicated. 



CHAPTEE II. 



DYSPEPSIA. 

Before our ancestors colonized the colder latitudes 
of this planet, the equatorial regions had for ages been 
inhabited by men or man-like four handers. The in- 
fluence of this long abode in the tropics still asserts 
itself in many peculiarities of our physical constitu- 
tion. We are but half acclimatized. Wolves are 
weather-proof : bears and badgers have managed to 
inure themselves to the miasma of their winter dens : 
but the primates of the animal kingdom can neither 
endure cold nor breathe impure air with perfect im- 
punity ; and of most of our civilized fellow-men, as 
well as of savages and all the species of our four- 
handed relatives who have thus far been wintered in 
northern menageries, it may be said that the sensi- 
tiveness of their lungs contrasts strangely with the 
tough vigor of their digestive organs. 

In proportion to his size, a rhesus baboon eats 

more than a wolf ; between morning and night a 

ceboo monkey will devour his own weight in bananas, 

and, where the cravings of a naturally vigorous stomach 

(52) 



DYSPEPSIA. 53 

are increased by the stimulus of a cold climate, it 
seems almost impossible to surfeit a savage with pal- 
atable food ; his appetite is the faithful exponent of 
his peptic capacity, and before the fauces positively 
refuse to ingest there is little danger that the gastric 
apparatus will fail to digest. Manifold and enormous 
must have been our sins against the dietary code of 
Nature before we could succeed in making indigestion 
a chronic disease. Deviations from the chemical 
standards of her menu are insufficient to account for 
her wrath. With all their unmistakable structural 
evidences of a frugivorous purpose, our digestive 
organs have been permitted to adapt themselves, not 
only to a carniverous and herbivorous diet and various 
innutritive substances, but to a considerable number 
of positive poisons. The Yahoots live on fish and 
seal-blubber. The Shoshones stick to bull-beef. 
The Namaqua Hottentots (who cannot plead the exi- 
gences of a cold climate) subsist almost entirely on 
venison. Several tribes of Northern Brazil eat clay 
with comparative impunity. Our Saxon forefathers 
added beer to venison and beef, and when they took 
to in-door life the stomach protested only by proxy ; 
an utterly wrong diet led, not to dyspepsia, but to 
scrofulous affections. Excess in moderately unwhole- 
some viands has to be carried to a monstrous degree 
before the after-dinner torpor turns into a malignant 
disease ; the stomach of a nomad seems to acquire a 
knack of assimilating a modicum of the ingesta and 
voiding the rest like so much innutritious stuff. Dr. 
Robert Moffat saw a Bushman eat twenty pounds 
of hippopotamus-liver and a bucketful of broiled 



54 HOUSEHOLD EEMEDIES. 

marrow, besides handfuls of ground-nuts, parched 
corn, and hackberries — all within twenty-four hours. 
In the provincial capitals of Northern China, where 
banquets of forty courses are de rigiieur, convivial 
mandarins learn to devour a quantum of comestibles 
that would torpify a boa-constrictor. Eating-matches 
of fourteen and fifteeen hours did not prevent Vitellius 
from acquiring distinction as a wrestler. 

Daily alcohol-fevers, combined with pepper and 
mustard inflammations, would ruin the stomach of an 
ostrich ; but in favor of the unf eathered biped Nature 
accepts such vicarious atonements as gout and dropsy. 
Thousands of crapulous Bavarian beer-swillers, who 
are hardly able to walk, are still able to digest their 
food. In-door life and want of exercise then added 
their quota of provocatives; but, where the lungs 
would have rebelled after seven protests, the stomach 
forgave seventy-seven times. Mediaeval prelates, 
squires, and aldermen tried in vain to exhaust the 
patience of the long-suffering organ. 

But their descendants finally solved that problem. 
To the alcoholic stimulants of the ancients w r e have 
added tea, coffee, tobacco, absinthe, chloral, opium, 
and pungent spices. Every year increases the num- 
ber of our elaborately unwholesome-made dishes, and 
decreases our devotion to the field-sports that helped 
our forefathers to digest their boar-steaks. We have 
no time to masticate our food ; we bolt it, and grumble 
if we can not bolt it smoking hot. The competition 
of our domestic and public kitchens tempts us to eat 
three full meals a day, and two of them at a time when 
the exigencies of our business-routine leave us no 



DYSPEPSIA. 55 

leisure for digestion. At night, when the opportunity 
for that leisure arrives, we counteract the efforts of 
the digestive apparatus by hot stove-fires and stifling 
bedrooms. Since the beginning of the commercial- 
epicurean age of the nineteenth centry the votaries of 
fashion have persistently vied in compelling their 
stomachs to dispose of the largest possible amount of 
the most indigestible food under the least favorable 
circumstances. 

That persistence has at last exhausted the self-reg- 
ulating resources of our digestive organs. But even 
after such provocations the stomach does not strike 
work without repeated warnings. The first omen of 
the wrath to come is the morning languor, the hollow- 
eyed lassitude which proves that the arduous labor 
of the assimilative organs has made the night the 
most fatiguing part of the twenty-four hours. The 
expression of the face becomes haggard and sallow. 
The tongue feels gritty, the palate parched, in spite 
of the restless activity of the salivary glands, which 
every now and then try to respond to the appeals of 
the distressed stomach. Gastric acidity betrays itself 
by many disagreeable symptoms ; loss of appetite, 
however, marks a later stage of the malady. For 
years the infinite patience of Nature labors every 
night to undo the mischief of every day, and before 
noon the surfeited organs again report ready for duty. 
Habitual excess in eating and drinking sometimes 
begets an unnatural appetency that enables the glut- 
ton to indulge his penchant to the last, only with this 
difference, that the relish for special kinds of food has 
changed into a vague craving for repletion^ just as the 



56 HOUSEHOLD REMEDIES. 

fondness for a special stimulant is apt to turn into a 
chronic poison-hunger. This craving after engorge- 
ment forms a distinctive symptom of plethoric dyspep- 
sia,, but even in the first stage of asthenic or nervous 
dyspepsia the hankering after food is not hunger pro- 
per, but a nervous uneasiness, suggesting the idea 
that a good meal would, somehow, supply the means 
of relief. The first full meal, however, entails penal- 
ties which the sufferer would gladly exchange for the 
less positive discomfort of the morning. Instinct 
fails to keep its promise, as a proof that Nature has 
been supplanted by a deceptive second nature. Head- 
ache, heart-burn, eructations, humming in the ears, 
nausea, vertigo, and gastric spasms, make the after- 
dinner hour " the saddest of the sad twenty-four " : 
a dull mist of discontent broods over the whole after- 
noon, and yields only to tea and lamp-light. The 
patient begins to fret under the weight of his 
afflictions, but still declines to remove the cause. To 
out-door exercise he objects, not on general prin- 
ciples, but on some special plea or other. He has to 
husband his strength. The raw March wind would 
turn his cough into a chronic catarrh. The warm 
weather would spoil his appetite and aggravate his 
vertigo. The truth is, that of the large quantum of 
comestibles ingested only a small modicum is digested, 
and that the system begins to weaken under the influ- 
ence of indirect starvation. Business routine prevents 
the dyspeptic from changing his mealtimes. He can- 
not reduce the number of his meals ; people have to 
conform to the arrangements of their boarding-house. 
The stomach needs something strengthening between 



DYSPEPSIA. 57 

breakfast and supper. The truth is, that the exertions of 
the digestive organs alternate with occasional reac- 
tions, entailing a nervous depression which can be (tem- 
porarily) relieved by the stimulus of a fresh engorge- 
ment. Business reasons may really prevent a reduc- 
tion of working hours, and domestic duties a change 
of climate or of occupation. The daily engorgement 
in the meanwhile goes on as before. 

Nature then resorts to more emphatic protests. Sleep 
comes in the form of a dull torpor that would make a 
nightmare a pleasant change of programme. The di- 
gestive laboratory seems to have lost the discretion 
of its automatic contrivances ; the process of assimi- 
lation, in all its details, obtrudes itself upon the cog- 
nizance of the sensorium, and urges the co-operation 
of the voluntary muscels. Contortions and pressing 
manipulations have to force each morsel through the 
gastric apparatus ; the lining of the stomach has be- 
come sentient, and shirks its work like a blistered pal- 
ate, Special tidbits can be traced through the whole 
course of their abdominal adventures. Undigested 
green peas roll on like buckshot hot from the 
smelting-pan of a shot-tower. A grilled partridge 
crawls along like a reluctant crab, clawing and biting 
at each step. Nausea and headache strive to relieve 
themselves in spasmodic eructations. Vertigoes, like 
fainting-fits, eclipse the eyesight for minutes together. 
Constipation, often combined with a morbid appetite, 
suggests distressful speculations on the possible out- 
come of the accumulating ingesta. The overfed 
organism is under-nourished to a degree that reveals 
itself in the rapid emancipation of the patient. The 



58 HOUSEHOLD REMEDIES. 

general derangement of the nervous system reacts on 
the mental faculties, and impairs their efficacy even 
for the most ordinary business purposes, till the in- 
valid at last realizes the necessity of reform. He tries 
to reduce the number of his meals ; but the lengthened 
intervals drag as heavily as the toper's time between 
drinks. He hopes to appease his stomach by a 
change of diet, but finds that the resolution has come 
too late ; the gastric mutiny has become indiscrimin- 
ate, and protests as savagely against a Graham bis- 
cuit as against a broiled pork sausage. He tries 
pedestrianism, but finds the remedy worse than the 
evil. The enemy has cut off his means of retreat ; the 
necessitous system has no strength to spare for such 
purposes as an effort of the motive organs. But nine 
out of ten dyspeptics resort to the drug-store. They 
get a bottle of "tonic bitters." They try Dr. Quack's 
"Dyspepsia Elixir." They try a "blue pill" — in the 
hope of rousing Nature, as it were, to a sense of her 
proper duty. 

Now, what such "tonics" can really do for them is 
this : they goad the system into the transient and 
abnormal activity incident to the necessity of expelling 
a virulent poison. With the accomplishment of that 
purpose the exertion ceases, and the ensuing exhaus- 
tion is worse than the first by just as much as the 
poison-fever has robbed the system of a larger or 
smaller share of its little remaining strength. The 
stimulant has wasted the organic energy which it 
seemed to revive. "But," says the invalid, "if a 
repetition of the dose can relieve the second reaction, 
would the result not be preferable to the languor of 



DYSPEPSIA. 59 

the unstimulated system? Wouldn't it be the best 
plan to let me support my strength by sticking to my 
patent tonic ?" 

Yes, it would be very convenient, especially in 
times of scarcity, if a starving horse could be sup- 
ported by the daily application of a patent spur. It 
would save both oats and oaths. Even a fastidious 
nag could not help acknowledging the pungency of 
the goad. But it so happens that spur-fed horses are 
somewhat short-lived, though at first the diet certainly 
seems to act like a charm. For a day or two the drug 
stimulates the activity of the digestive organs as well 
as of the mental faculties, but the subsequent prostra- 
tion is so intolerable that the patient soon chooses 
the alternative of another poison-fever. Before long 
the pleasant phase of the febrile process becomes 
shorter and the reaction more severe ; the jaded sys- 
tem is less able to respond to the goad, and, in order 
to make up for the difference, the dose of the stimu- 
lant has to be steadily increased. The invalid be- 
comes a bondsman to the drug-store, and hugs the 
chain that drags him down to the slavery of a con- 
firmed poison-habit. 

Circumstances may differ. A dyspeptic who intends 
to make his own quietus within a month or two, and in 
the meanwhile has a certain amount of work to finish, 
would be justified in stimulating his working capaci- 
ties by all means, in order to improve to the utmost 
whatever chances of mundane activity may remain to 
him. But he who intends to stay has to make up his 
mind that recovery cannot be hoped for till he has not 
only discontinued his drug, but expiated the burden 



60 HOUSEHOLD EEMEDIES. 

of sin which the stimulent outrage has added to the 
original cause of the disease. Nature has to overcome 
the effects both of malnutrition and of malpractice. 
The drug has complicated the disease. 

In childhood chronic dyspepsia is in nearly all 
cases the effect of chronic medication. Indigestion 
is not an hereditary complaint. A dietetic sin per 
excessum, a quantitative surfeit with sweetmeats and 
pastry, may derange the digestive process for a few 
hours or so, but the trouble passes by with the holi- 
day. Lock up the short-cakes, administer a glass of 
cold water, and, my life for yours, that on Monday 
morning the little glutton will be ready to climb the 
steepest hill in the county. But stuff him with liver- 
pills, drench him with cough-sirup and paregoric, 
and in a month or two he will not be able to satisfy 
the cravings of the inner boy without "assisting 
Nature " with a patent stimulant. 

But is it fair to denounce a palliative when the 
radical memedies have lost their efficacy? What 
dietetic reform can avail a man to whom oatmeal- 
gruel has become a poison ? How can he invigorate 
his system by exercise if he is hardly able to support 
himself on his legs ? The asthenic stage of the dis- 
ease can reach a degree when the mere suggestion of 
gymnastic enterprises is enough to produce a fit of 
nervous spasms. I have known of dyspeptics who 
would not have crossed a room to save a pet bird 
from the claws of a cat, and who would have joined 
an expedition to the north pole as soon as to the 
skating-ring. Theirs is a sad plight, for a rule that 
holds good of unnatural habits in general applies 



DYSPEPSIA. 61 

more especially to the chronic establishment of 
dietetic abuses, namely, that the further we have 
strayed from nature, the longer and wearier will be 
the road of reform. Before the invalid can restore 
the health and vigor of his system, he has to restore 
his capacity for exercise. The first object is to create 
a healthy demand for nourishment. Under normal 
circumstances that demand is proportioned to the 
amount of the organic expenditure. The nursing fe- 
males of the mammalia require a larger amount of 
nourishing diet than the ordinary wants of the sys- 
tem would account for. During the age of rapid 
growth, children eat and digest as much as hard- 
working men. Diabetes, the first stage of consump- 
tion and other wasting diseases, is characterized by 
an exorbitant appetite. Every increase of muscular 
activity involves an augmented demand for nourish- 
ment ; coeteris paribus, the man who walks a mile from 
his shop to his home will digest his supper more 
easily than he who takes the street-car. The hotel- 
boarder who makes it a rule to walk up the four flights 
of stairs to his attic will sleep sounder and awaken 
more refreshed, than he who uses the elevator. 

But the far-gone dyspeptic who is incapable of an 
active effort has to begin with a passive method of 
natural stimulation — the refrigeration-cure, based 
on the tonic influence of cold air and cold water. 
Voracity increases with the distance from the equa- 
tor. An Esquimau eats a quantum that would crapu- 
late three Hottentots and six Hindoos. A cold winter 
curtails the profits of boarding-houses. Camping in 
the open air whets the abpetite even without the aid 



62 HOUSEHOLD REMEDIES. 

of active exercise. A bracing temperature exacts 
a sort of automatic exercise : it accelerates the circu- 
lation, it promotes the oxidation of the blood, and in- 
directly stimulates the whole respiratory process.* 
The generation of animal caloric has to be increased 
to balance the depression of the external temperature. 

Hence the invigorating effect of mountain air, of 
sea-bathing, and, in high latitudes, of sea-voyages. 
The first dose of the tonic can be applied in-doors : 
sponge and shower baths, or Franklin's air-baths — a 
few minutes' pause between undress and bed-time. 

People who have got rid of the night-air supersti- 
tion can almost defy dyspepsia by sleeping in a cross- 
draught, or, in cold weather, at least near a half-open 
window. Cold, fresh air is an invaluable aid to the 
assimilation of non-nitrogenous articles of food (fat 
meat, butter, etc.). Stifling bedrooms neutralize the ef- 
fects of out-door exercise. Winter is, therefore, on the 
whole, the most auspicious time for beginning a dyspep- 
sia cure. In summer a highland sanitarium is the best 
place to start with, or, for coast dwellers a surfy sea- 
shore. Early rising, a cold bath before breakfast, 
frequent ablutions, deep draughts of cold water, flav- 
ored with Seltzer and sugar or a few drops of rasp- 
berry sirup, an air-bath before going to bed, and wide- 
open bedroom-windows, will score an important point 



* "Why should sickness prevail during the warm, pleasant 
weather so much more frequently than during the cold ? The rea- 
son appears to me very plain, The cold weather braces up, gives 
us a sharp appetite, and we indulge freely in food which, while the 
cold weather continnes, can be tolerated by the system." — Dr. C. 
E. Page. 



DYSPEPSIA. 63 

in favor of Nature — the return of a normal appetite, 
and with, it of renewed strength and mental elasticity. 
If the after-dinner affliction should show no direct 
signs of abatement, the patient must bide his time, 
and, under no circumstances, resort to the drug-ex- 
orcism. Temporary blue-devils are far preferable to 
a persistent blue-pill Beelzebub. But aid Nature by 
all legitimate means. Masticate thoroughly every 
mouthful of solid food. Eschew spices. Avoid pickles, 
cheese, salt meat, sour-krout, and hot drinks. Take 
a light breakfast, a lighter lunch, postpone the princi- 
pal meal till the day's work is done, and make the 
after-dinner hour as pleasant as possible. Court fresh 
air at all times of the day and the night, and in the 
course of two or three weeks the capacity for active 
exercise will return. That point gained, the problem 
of recovery is reduced to a question of perseverance. 
The distress of the first attempts suggests almost the 
expediency of an unconditional surrender, but, after 
a dozen morning promenades in the park, and as 
many dumb-bell soirees, the three chief remedies be- 
gin to work hand in hand — exercise, refrigeration and 
temperance. Exercise spices non-stimulating food, 
fresh air promotes digestion, and restored digestion 
gives strength for more exercise. 

There will be fluctuations in the process of conval- 
esence. The valor of it, the confidence in the possi- 
bility of complete expiation, will sometimes falter 
under the realization of past sins. The very effective- 
ness of the remedies will demonstrate the almost un- 
pardonable mistake of their long neglect. But the 
stomach is not implacable, and, in spite of a few fret- 



64 HOUSEHOLD REMEDIES. 

ful relapses, it will, on the whole, accept the terms of 
reconciliation and ratify the treaty from week to week, 
till the convalescent has reached the maximum, and 
future average of two hours per day of active out- 
door exercise. Languid promenades may require an 
extension of that time ; wood-chopping will justify 
its reduction to an hour and a half. For rainy days 
there should be a covered wood-shed, or, better yet, 
an amateur carpenter shop with a liberal supply of 
dull saws and thick boards. Asthenic invalids will 
derive great benefit from horseback exercise, or even 
from a blackboard trip — with or without catch-ropes — 
the great desideratum in antibilious exercise being 
concussion, the sound shaking up of the whole frame. 
Trapeze evolutions, spring-board and dumb-bell prac- 
tice rank, therefore, highest among the gymnastic 
specifics ; wood cutting and sawing among the more 
arduous kinds of manual labor ; and trotting down 
hill among the various modes of pedestrian exercise. 
It is worth a dyspeptic's while to hire a sedan-chair 
to lug him to the top of an out-of-the-way hill, and a 
boy to run him a race to the foot of it. After a week 
or so he will be able to dispense with the sedan. At 
the first symptoms of indigestion, book-keepers, en- 
try clerks, authors, and editors should at once get a 
telescope-desk. Literary occupations need not neces- 
sarily involve sedentary habits, though, as the alterna- 
tive of a standing-desk, I should prefer a Turkish 
writing-tablet and a square yard of carpet cloth to 
squat upon. But Schreber's telescope desk enables 
the writer to sit and stand by turns, and has the fur- 



DYSPEPSIA. 65 

ther advantage of a sloping top that eases the wrist 
by resting the weight of the arm upon the elbow. 

Cold-baths (always before dinner) may be limited 
to the summer season ; but open bedroom windows 
are de rigueur the year round. As long as the bed- 
clothes keep the couch warm, the lungs can inhale 
cold air not only with impunity, but with the most 
unmistakable benefit to the digestive organs. The 
cold nights of the South African table-lands enable 
the Caffre to digest his barbecues of sorghum beer 
and rhinoceros steaks, and the neighborhood of a 
glacier makes many a Swiss highland hotel a strong- 
hold of gluttony. In the dog-days it can do no 
harm, in a sequestered region, to take a river side 
ramble at a time when only the moonlight watches on 
the meadows, for out-door exercise on an oppressively 
sultry day may defeat its object and bring on a fit of 
retching and nausea. Intensely cold air, on the other 
hand, is such a powerful tonic that, in mid-winter, a 
ten minutes' trot along an icy pavement will often 
serve ail the digestive purposes of that day, though 
the convalescent will be surer to have fulfilled all 
righteousness by adding half an hour's arm work in 
the wood-shed. In midsummer dyspeptics some- 
times deprecate exercise on the peculiar plea that a 
long-continued muscular effort acts as a reliable as- 
tringent, and the testimony of a veteran gymnasium 
teacher of my acquaintance seems to confirm the phy- 
siological fact. But, in the first place, a transient 
constipation is no very serious matter, and, besides, 
the danger can generally be obviated by training early 



66 HOUSEHOLD REMEDIES. 

in the morning, or (about three hours after the last 
meal) in the cool of the evening. 

Dietetic-reforms should begin with the prescription 
of a strictly non-stimulating diet. A spoonful of 
mustard, a glass of small-beer or claret, may seem a 
trifle ; but the trouble is that all stimulant-habits are 
progressive : the pungent spices are apt to slide into 
pungent tobacco, and the claret into port, or some- 
thing worse. Fresh apple-vinegar, with a fruity 
flavor, can perhaps not do much more harm than 
sweet cider, but salt is not quite above suspicion, and 
the safest plan is to stick to comestibles that can be 
eaten without it. Cream, for that and other reasons, 
is better than fat meat, a whortleberry-soup better 
than a gravy-soup, and a raspberry -pudding prefer- 
able to a blood-pudding. All fried and broiled 
viands, all pickles, all rancid cheese, butter, and 
sausages, all smoked meats, are suspicious. Catchup- 
vials harbor the bottled-up demon of indigestion. 
But, withal, the diet should not be insipid. Ultra- 
vegetarians denounce all kinds of fat. TJltra-Gra- 
hamites suspect all sorts of flesh-meats. "Let your 
cook distinctly understand," says one peptic philoso- 
pher, "that, on peril of her life, she is to set nothing 
savory before you." Many hygienic institutes feed 
their dyspeptics on stale bran-bread, water-gruel, and 
watery vegetables. Man has a right to decline exis- 
tence on such terms. Not the naturally palatable, 
but the unnaturally stimulating qualities of a dish 
tempt the dyspeptic to eat to excess. For one man who 
surfeits himself with sweet grapes or pancakes, a 
thousand, at least, derange their digestion with 



DYSPEPSIA. 67 

strong cheese, or hot-peppered ragouts. Alcoholic 
stimulants kill hundreds every year ; how many in- 
temperate drinkers have ever killed themselves with 
fresh milk or lemonade? And cannot fruits, flour, 
milk, eggs, sugar, and orange juice furnish the ingre- 
dients of a very tolerable meal ? — not to mention ber- 
ries, tubers, and dozens of harmless vegetables that can 
be creamed and sugared into tidbits to rival the entrees 
of the Freres Prove^aux in everything except viru- 
lence, alias pungency. It is better to improve the 
digestion than to spoil the appetite, for no man can 
thrive on a naturally distasteful diet. Nature intend- 
ed us to be vegetarians ; but I cannot help thinking 
that the word is misleading by its popular association 
with the idea of kitchen vegetables. Our next rela- 
tives in the animal kingdom do not live on pot-herbs, 
but on fruit. The victims of plethoric dyspepsia, the 
chronic gluttons who gorge for the sake of repletion, 
would stuff themselves with a potful of watery spin- 
ach as quick as with an eel-pie ; and theirs is a rare, 
but indeed rather embarrassing predicament : they 
seem as unable to stop eating as to begin digestion. 
They are evermore esurient, though as cachetic as a 
starved Silesian weaver ; I have seen gouty gluttons, 
to whom the sight of a restaurant window was as 
tempting as a tavern sign to a toper. Certain drugs 
would abridge their penchant, but, with it, also, the last 
traces of a digestive function ; and instead of reduc- 
ing their appetite, it is better to reduce its capacity 
for mischief, by limiting the number of their daily 
meals. For, after all, that capacity is circumscribed 
by the caliber of the stomach, and, if the quality of 



68 HOUSEHOLD REMEDIES.. 

the food is unexceptionable, there is no serious dan- 
ger of a man's eating more at one meal than his sys- 
tem, under otherwise favorable circumstances, can 
dispose of in the course of twenty-three hours. The 
apprehension in such cases as to the insufficiency of 
one meal a day is wholly gratuitous. For more than 
a thousand years the one-meal system was the rule in 
two countries that could raise armies of men every 
one of whom would have made his fortune as a mod- 
ern athlete — men who marched for days under a load 
of iron (besides clothes and provisions) that would 
stagger a modern porter. Even here, abstinence is 
easier than temperance ; for twenty-three hours of 
each day it is far easier to abstain from food (though, 
of course, not from water) than to begin eating and 
stop in time. Not one glutton in a thousand will do 
it. Dio Lewis recommends a limited number of 
dishes — "never put more on the table than you intend 
to eat" ; but the first mouthful reawakens the passion 
of Polyphemus, and for those who cannot govern 
their appetite it is just about as easy to call for an- 
other dish as to reach for another plateful. But it is 
an excellent rule to prolong the pauses between the 
several dishes of a full meal, in order to give the 
stomach time to indicate the real wants of the system. 
"The ingestion of food," says Dr. Carpenter, " one 
cannot at once produce the effect of diminishing the 
feeling of hunger, though it will do so after a short 
time, so that, if we eat with undue rapidity, we may 
continue swallowing food long after we have taken as 
much as the wants of the body require." 
The origin of the glutton habit can often be traced 



DYSPEPSIA. 69 

to the mistaken liberality of a host who constantly 
urges the conviviality of his young guests, or even to 
the fatuous tenderness of nursing mothers, who so 
frequently think it their duty, as Dr. Page expresses 
it, to make a baby " guzzle till it is ready to die with 
fatty degeneration." 

Begin with reducing the number of daily meals and 
exercise a change of climate and of habits will by 
and by help to subdue the baneful penchant. Occa- 
sional relapses cannot be avoided ; but the progres- 
sive relief from a number of the worst gastric afflic- 
tions will at last induce the veriest cormorant to stick 
to the one meal plan. 

The best time for that one meal is the end of the 
working-day — 4 or 5 P. M. — when business-cares can 
be laid aside for the rest of the evening Asthenic 
dyspeptics, too — all, at least, who are not completely 
masters of their own time— had better choose that 
hour for their principal meal. No other hygienic mis- 
take, not even the stimulant-fallacy, has done so much 
to make ours a dyspeptic generation as the fatal habit 
of after-dinner head-work — severe mental labor in the 
study, the school-room or the counting-house, at a 
time when the whole strength of the system is claim- 
ed by the digestion of a heavy meal. Not only that 
the progress of digestion is thus interrupted, not only 
that the body derives no strength from the inert mass 
of ingesta, but that mass, by undergoing a putrid in- 
stead of peptic decomposition, vitiates the humors of 
the system it was intended to nourish, irritates the 
sensitive membranes of the stomach, and gradually 
impairs the vigor of the whole digestive apparatus. 



70 HOUSEHOLD REMEDIES. 

Hence the gastric torments of poor overworked teach- 
ers, who (unlike happier servants of the public) can- 
not shirk their work, and have to snatch their dinner 
during a brief interval of the hardest kind of mental 
drudgery. Hence the sallow complexion, the hollow 
eyes, and the w T eary gait of thousands of city clerks, 
scholars, lawyers, newspaper drudges, and even phy- 
sicians. Housewives, after dinner, have generally 
the good sense to rest awhile, often a very good while, 
and thus manage to digest their food ; for, that their 
immunity is not a prerogative of their sex is demon- 
strated by the chlorotic complexion of lady teachers 
and boarding-school girls, who have only an hour's 
recess — physiologically no recess at all, if the school- 
bell rings right after dinner. 

For those who have to drudge the whole afternoon, 
it would be better to postpone the principal meal to 
the very end of the day, and laugh at the supposed 
danger of " sleeping on a full stomach." For what 
do those who add a supper to an undigested dinner ? 
— only with this difference, that their stomachs are 
obliged to dispose of an acidulated melange. Ani- 
mals, in a state of nature, nearly always sleep or rest 
after a heavy meal ; only the homo sapiens disregards 
the promptings of his instinct and relies on a dyspep- 
sia pill. 

In most cases, however, the matter could be com- 
promised. Early rising and an unmuddled brain 
would enable almost any man to go home at 3 or 4 
p. M., and counting-house clerks should consent to a 
reduction of their wages rather than forego the same 
privilege ; at five, a full meal of milk, farinaceous 



DYSPEPSIA. 71 

preparations, and nutritive vegetables, followed by a 
dessert of fresh or cooked fruit ; then a siesta of two 
full hours, music, conversation, or, faute de mieux, an 
entertaining book ; then, the weather permitting, a 
ramble in the cool evening air, or light gymnastics ; 
then rest in undress, an air-bath, and open bedroom- 
windows. 

The general adoption of that plan would surely 
soon dissipate a strange and strangely prevalent 
fallacy : the supposed natural antagonism of the brain 
and the stomach — the alleged impossibility of com- 
bining studious habits with a sound digestion. Re- 
stricted to proper hours, head-work is as stimulating 
as any other kind of labor, and promotes digestion 
instead of hindering it. The nature-abiding habits of 
such men as Boileau, Linn96us, Cuvier, Goethe, and 
Humboldt, enabled them to reconcile the mental 
strain of their enormous literary activity with the en- 
joyment of almost uninterrupted health. 

Dyspeptics, therefore, need not shirk brain-work, 
but, as they would shun the pills of a mercury-quack, 
they should beware of exasperating mental emotions. 
For it is a curious and not quite explained but incon- 
testable fact that a short fit of anger is often enough 
not only to derange but to completely arrest the di- 
gestive process for a whole day. Close behind the 
stomach is a group of ganglia, the solar plexus, which 
sends out a large number of nerve-filaments that com- 
municate with the brain, and thus suggest the physi- 
ological explanation of the curious phenomenon, 
though its final or teleological purpose is somewhat 
less apparent. Haller connects it with the fact that 



72 HOUSEHOLD REMEDIES. 

anger vitiates the saliva (teste, the virulent bite of en- 
raged animals), and suggests that by a wise arrange- 
ment of Nature the suspension of the assimilative 
process may preserve the chyle from the contamina- 
tion of malignant humors ; and, in connection with 
the same subject, Camper mentions the circumstance 
th&t fear often acts as a sudden cathartic, perhaps for 
the purpose of easing the stomach, and thus prepar- 
ing the body for emergencies — the necessity for flight, 
for instance. Speculations of that sort lead to a field 
of curious but rather recondite biological metaphy- 
sics ; but the empirical fact remains, and partly sug- 
gests the rationale of another fact — namely, that plea- 
surable mental emotions act as a benignant digestive 
tonic. Hence, perhaps, the peptic beatitude of "jolly 
paunches," fellows who seem constitutionally unable 
to see the gloomy side of earthly concernments, and 
wax fat on the prescription of Democritus, "Hide, si 
sapis." The autocrat of the dinner table should, 
therefore, peremptorily exclude all conversational 
topics of an irritating character, as well as all busi- 
ness talk. A remarkable influence on the action of 
the bowels can be exerted by mechanical laughter — I 
mean the agitation of the diaphragm by means of a 
forcible and long-continued chuckle. Laurence Sterne 
mentions that he was able to keep up this factitious 
kind of laughter for minutes together, with or with- 
out the association of risible ideas. On solitary even- 
ings that talent could be utilized as a physiological 
compensation for the absence of merry friends. 

For the effects of mental worry, and nervousness 
(often the after-effect of stimulating medication) the 



DYSPEPSIA. 73 

best remedy, next to out-door work, is a liberal allow- 
ance of sleep; and metropolitans who cannot afford to 
join the summer exodus should at least remove their 
beds to a suburban cottage, far from the sleep-mur- 
dering* noise of the business centers. 

But neither long sleep nor short meals can save 
dyspeptics who will insist on swallowing their food 
smoking hot. The walls of the stomach are lined 
with a nerve-interwoven delicate membrane, which 
suffers from scalding fluids as much as any other te- 
gumental tissues of the body, and by daily torrefac- 
tions becomes either callous or chronically inflamed, 
and in either case less fit for the performance of its 
important functions. Our forefathers served their 
viands steaming hot but stuck at least to cool drinks, 
but hot French soups were soon followed by hot tea 
and coffee. The " second breakfast," as the Germans 
call the eleven-o'clock refreshment, used at least to 
consist of cold meats ; but competing saloon-keepers 
have now introduced hot lunches, and in our larger 
cities there is no escape for dyspeptics ; " the smoke 
of their torment ariseth for ever and ever." 

The gastric irritability which forms a lingering 
after-effect of chronic dyspepsia can be better allayed 
by a vegetable diet than by the nutritive extracts which 
are supposed to aid the work of digestion. The bulk 
of innutritive admixtures somehow excites and main- 
tains the vigor of the digestive organs ; and the 
human organism cannot thrive on concentrated nour- 
ishment, as for similar reasons the lungs cannot be 
fed on pure oxygen. Water, either pure or in organic 
compounds, is likewise an effective sedative and de- 



74 HOUSEHOLD KEMEDIES. 

puratory ; it aids the process of eliminating the indi- 
gestible or noxious elements of various articles of food, 
whose ingestion therefore excites thirst. But with- 
out waiting for that urgent appeal, we should remem- 
ber that the diet of our instinct-guided relatives con- 
tains about ninety per cent of water, and that a dearth 
of fruit should be compensated by artificial com- 
pounds, supplying the requisite amount of fluids in a 
palatable form. The remedial influence of many 
famous spas is due to the water as much as to its 
mineral admixtures. About fifty years ago, the 
Brooklyn hotels were crowded with visitors, attracted 
by the fame of a doctor who cured all manner of dis- 
eases with pure rain-water. The mystic motto of 
Thales, " Ariston men hydor" ("The best of all things 
is water"), might perhaps be explained from such 
facts. Our diet, in fact, is much too dry, and could 
be improved without resorting to lager beer, which 
redeems its deleterious influence to some degree by 
helping the Germans to digest their pungent comes- 
tibles. Water, in some of its combinations, is also an 
effective aperient ; in watermelons and whey, for in- 
stance ; but still more in conjunction with a dish of 
legumina — peas, lentils, and beans. No constipation 
can long withstand the suasion of a daily dose of pea- 
soup, or baked beans, flavored with a modicum of 
brown butter, and glorified with a cup of cold spring 
water ; and, moreover, the aperient effect is not fol- 
lowed by an astringent reaction — the cure, once 
effected, is permanent. Plethoric dyspepsia is almost 
invariably accompanied by close stools, and the drugs 
that have been swallowed to ease Nature — for a day — 



DYSPEPSIA. 75 

would poison half the living creatures of the American 
Continent. 

But rather forego the beans than eat them with 
pork. The interdict of the Hebrew lawgiver, I sus- 
pect, has something to do with the climate-proof 
health of his countrymen, for in warm weather fat 
pork is about as digestible as yellow soap. The 
Hungarian peasants are ravenously fond of it, and 
neither out-door life nor the vigor of their Turanian 
stomachs can save them from the consequences. 
Every summer, and sometimes three and four times a 
year, the digestive system of the rustic Magyar re- 
lieves itself by an expurgative process known as the 
tz6mor y or pork surfeit, a three days' purgatory of 
heart-burns, nausea, and violent retching, accom- 
panied by a burning thirst and an unspeakable loath- 
ing of all solid food. He who weathers the storm, 
says the traveler Kohl, feels like a new-made man, 
and reappears at the family table ; but so does the 
pork-pot, and a few months after the respited sinner 
has another seizure, and groans, "O Jesus, Maria, 
meg tzomoretem — it's got me again !" 

After the re-establishment of intestinal digestion, 
flatulence, vertigo, and that terror of constipated tea- 
drinkers, dull headache, become less and less fre- 
quent ; the spell of the deliqium is broken, and the 
redevelopment of the wasted muscles proves that the 
system is no longer obliged to feed upon its own 
tissue. But these first symptoms of improvement 
should not encourage the patient to relax the rigor of 
the regimen before he is sure that the gastric in- 
flammation has wholly subsided. As long as spasms 



76 HOUSEHOLD REMEDIES. 

and acrid eructations (water-brash) indicate the dan- 
ger of a relapse, give the stomach all the rest you can. 
Never miss an opportunity that will make it easy to 
forego a meal or two. There are ways to make a 
fast-day a very trifling inconvenience, and its remedial 
value exceeds that of a round-trip to all the spas of 
the Eastern Continent. In my experiments on the 
operation of the fasting-cure, I have noticed the 
curious fact that for the first day or two the clamors 
of the stomach are restricted to certain hours, and can 
be induced to waive a disregarded claim. Con- 
valescents who have already reduced the morning 
lunch to the standard of a Spartan breakfast, "a 
heathen fig and a thrice-accursed biscuit," can be- 
guile the dinner-hour by diverting pastimes — a boat- 
trip, a fishing-excursion, a visit to the Zoo — and upon 
their return home will find that the craving for food 
has yielded to sleepiness, and the sweetness of the 
night's rest will be worth seven meals. It is during 
such periods of undisturbed rest that the work of re- 
pair makes its surest progress, and for the first three 
or four months it would be a good plan to imitate the 
example of the Ebonite heretics, who observed a 
weekly fast-day in the Ugolino sense of the word. 
Water, of course, should never be stinted, and, afer a 
long fast, will have an especially good chance to 
depurate the vacated passages of the abdominal laby- 
rinth. 

An advanced stage of alcoholism (which will be 
treated in a separate chapter) often results in that 
malignant form of chronic indigestion known as 
hepatic or bilious dyspepsia, a complete derangement 

% 



DYSPEPSIA. 77 

of the digestive process, accompanied by headaches, 
which for months defy the influence of an hygienic 
regimen, and yield only to the heroic remedies of the 
pedestrian-cure. But with that exception, ten weeks 
of strict temperance, fresh air, and moderate exercise, 
will generally suffice to appease the resentment of the 
outraged stomach. During the next twelve months 
the reconciled digestive apparatus helps to redress 
the impairments of other organs. For it is a generic 
peculiarity of dyspeptic affections that the symptom- 
atic outlast the idiopathic disorders. After the action 
of the bowels has become perfectly regular, after fat 
and sugar have ceased to cause heart-burn, the 
chronic lassitude — not pain exactly, but a nervous 
disinclination to active exercise — still lingers about 
the knee-joints ; the flexor muscles of the upper arm 
still shirk their work ; headaches that cannot always 
be traced to dietetic backslidings recur at irregular 
intervals. The countenance is still sallow, the eye- 
sight more or less impaired ; even vertigo and mur- 
murs in the ears occur, without their former gastric 
concomitants. But at the end of each month the pro- 
gress in the direction of general health is unmistak- 
able. Mountain excursions marvelously further the 
good work ; but even the counting-house drudge need 
not doubt the reward of his perseverance, as long as 
he sticks to a plain diet, and such exercise as the op- 
portunities of his leisure will offer on all but the 
busiest days. Unlike consumption (which can only 
be made non-progressive), dyspepsia can be thor- 
oughly cured. As far as they are capable of repair, 



78 HOUSEHOLD REMEDIES. 

injuries to the respiratory organs heal quickly ; gas- 
tric ailments with less ease but more completely. 

Gynmastics, however, combined with cold-baths, 
air-baths, deep draughts of cold spring- water, dietetic 
aperients, temperance, abstinent forenoons, liberal 
siestas, cheerful evenings, and wide-open bedroom- 
windows, will speed the advent of the time when the 
after-dinner hour shall cease to be the "saddest of 
the sad twenty-four" — nay, when digestion, like all 
normal functions of the animal organism, shall be 
once more not only a painless but a pleasurable pro- 
cess. 



CHAPTEE III. 



CLIMATIC FEVERS. 

Life is a sun-child ; and nearly all species of plants 
and animals attain the highest forms of their devel- 
opment in the neighborhood of the equator. Palm- 
trees are tropical grasses. The python-boa is a fully 
developed black snake ; the tiger an undiminished 
wild-cat. With every degree of a higher latitude, Na- 
ture issues the representatives of her arch-types in re- 
duced editions — reduced in beauty and longevity, as 
well as in size and strength. 

The human animal, however, seems to form an ex- 
ception to that general rule. For the last two thou- 
sand years, nine out of ten international wars ended 
with the victory of northern nations over their south - 
thern neighbors. The hegemony of commerce and 
superior civilization moves farther and farther north. 
Our oracles have been transferred from Delphi to 
Berlin, to Edinburgh and Boston. The Muses and 
Graces are wearing fur cloaks. Has the sun of the 
south lost its stimulating power ? The truth seems 
to be, that cold air is an antidote. The antiseptic ef- 
(79) 



80 HOUSEHOLD REMEDIES. 

feet of a cold climate enables us to indulge with com- 
parative impunity in numerous vices which our south- 
ern neighbors have paid with the loss of their moral 
and physical health. It has been ascertained that 
alcoholic stimulants, instead of increasing actually 
decrease the temperature of the system, and that cold 
weather constitutes no valid excuse for the use of in- 
toxicating drinks, but it is equally certain that a low 
temperature promotes recovery from the effects of in- 
toxication. Many hyperboreans eat flesh as a stimu- 
lant rather than as a medium of calefaction ; tea 
drinkers contract a morbid craving for boiling hot 
beverages. But climatic influences increase the ac- 
tivity of their digestive organs to a degree that en- 
ables Nature to compromise the violation of her laws. 
Gluttons and topers die in the south and survive in 
the north, not because a warm climate per se is incom- 
patible with the normal vigor of the human system, 
but because a cold winter counteracts the effects of 
gluttony and intemperance in much the same way as 
rum counteracts the effects of a snake-bite, or mercury 
the virus of the hies veneris. Frost is a counter-poi- 
son. Protracted impunity tempts sinners to believe 
in the innocence of their habits. During the two cen- 
turies when the Caesars vied in the gratuitous purvey- 
ance of bread, oil, and circus games, the Roman citi- 
zens had no special reason to admit the turpitude of 
idleness. Under the protection of the Holy Inquisition 
dunces were secure enough against the competition of 
genius to consider ignorance as a virtue. Thus the 
prophylactic influence of a frigid climate has made 
the propriety of many of our daily sins so axiomatic 



CLIMATIC FEVERS. 81 

that the neglect of their practice excites a sort of 
virtuous indignation. A German proverb, traced to 
the table-talk of an eminent reformer, denounces the 
demerits of the man who fails to worship music ? 
women, and — wine. To many minds closed bedroom- 
windows and three warm meals a day are essential 
conditions of respectability. Even in the dog-days, * 
the impropriety of Scotch knee-breeches would be 
thought worthy of a harsher name. When financial 
embarrassments obliged the later Csesars to abolish 
the free-lunch system, the astonishment of the cives 
Rornanus was only equaled by his wrath at the injus- 
tice of the innovation ; and with a similar mixture of 
indignation and surprise thousands of exiles from the 
regions of prophylactic frost denounce the malignity 
of a climate that fails to protect them from the logical 
consequences of their sins against nature. In sum- 
mer weeks, when the Creoles pass the night on their 
flat house-roofs, with a mattress and a linen bed- 
sheet, and regret at the necessity of adding a mos- 
quito-cap, the foreign resident insists on sleeping 
in a flannel undershirt, under w^oolen blankets, and 
the impression that his life depends on keeping 
his doors and windows hermetically closed. During 
the noontide glare, when the youngsters of the native 
patricians run about in white muslin inexpressibles, 
and their plebeian comrades in still less expressible 
and certainly unspeakably sensible costume, the 
children of the north have to mourn their exile in 
black broadcloth, woolen stockings, boots or air-tight 
gaiters, tight-fitting collars, neckties, and waistcoats, 
besides the unavoidable flannel undershirt. And, 



82 HOUSEHOLD KEMEDIES. 

worse than that, the ex-hyperborean not only con- 
tinues to gorge himself with an amount of calorific 
food that would more than suffice for the climatic 
exigencies of his own latitude, but persists in eating 
that excessive amount in the specially indigestible 
form of fried and broiled meat, served smoking hot 
with greasy sauces, after a prelude of sudorific doses 
of hot soups or narcotic drinks. In a cold climate 
the pathological results of overfeeding are chiefly 
limited to the evils of mal-nutrition, i. e.,the difficulty 
of eliminating the cachetic elements of a mass of ac- 
cumulated and fermenting ingesta. But in a warm 
climate that result is complicated by the further diffi- 
culty of maintaining the normal temperature of the 
system. For the organic functions of the animal body 
require a uniform degree of warmth as a condition of 
their healthy performance, and in the human body 
the normal average of that temperature has been 
found to be about 98° Fahr. A variation of only two 
degrees denotes an abnormal depression or accelera- 
tion of f unctional activity, a difference of five degrees 
indicates a serious disease. In the polar regions, 
where a rousing stove-fire often fails to thaw the 
rime-frost on the stove-pipe, the organism of the 
human body contrives to maintain its blood-heat 
within half a degree of the normal average, i. e., some- 
times at a temperature of 150° above that of the ex- 
ternal air. In the tropics the same marvelous organ- 
ism becomes a refrigerating apparatus, and lowers its 
temperature as much as thirty degrees below that of 
the outer atmosphere, which in British India, for in- 



CLIMATIC FEVERS. 83 

stance, has been seen at 132o above zero, or a hundred 
degrees above the freezing-point. 

In these thermal regulations, Nature has, however, 
to rely on the co-operation of instinct or reason ; and 
a mariner who would wear the same dress on a north- 
pole expedition and a trip to Suez could hardly hope 
to escape the consequences of his imprudence. But 
even if the Artie explorer should not only forget his 
furs, but intentionally chill his blood by sitz-baths on 
an ice-floe, and promenades in the costume of the 
Nereids, his chances of continued health could hardly 
be worse than those of the British merchant who prac- 
tices in the tropics the calorific artifices of his native 
land, and aggravates the blood-seething effects of a 
West Indian summer by superfluous clothes and 
worse than superfluous beefsteaks and sudorific 
drinks. The blood of the sitz-bathing mariner would 
congeal ; the blood of the beef-eating merchant does 
ferment. With all the diversity of opinion as to 
the proximate cause of climatic fevers, there is no 
doubt that the febrile blood-changes indicate the 
agency of a catalytic or fermentative process. In yellow 
fever the temperature of the body arises to 105 Q , and 
after death often to 112° ; the progress of decomposi- 
tion separates the serum from the red blood-globules 
(whence the chlorotic hue of the skin) and the bodies 
of the victims need immediate interment on account 
of the rapidity with which putrefaction begins, or 
rather completes, its work. The clinical study of the 
disease in such towns as Vera Cruz and New Orleans 
has preserved the record of many curious cases of 
molecular life after somatic death. Dr. Benntt Dow- 



84 HOUSEHOLD REMEDIES. 

ler (" New York Journal of Medicine, " 1846 ) men- 
tions the case of an Irishman whose arms, after the 
cessation of respiration, rose and fell with a rhyth- 
mical motion, and of a Kentuckian whose flexor muc- 
ks, four hours after death, reacted against the slight- 
est mechanical stimulation. The symptoms of ordi- ; 
nary "chills and fevers" can be temporarily suppressed 
by antiseptic drugs — quinine, arsenic, strychnine, 
ferro-cynanide of iron — in fact, by all chemicals that 
would arrest a process of decomposition. Hence also 
the prophylactic effect of alcohol ("tonic bitters") 
and of Nature's great antiseptic, frost. 

That marsh-miasma is only an adjuvant cause of 
endemic fevers can be abundantly demonstrated by 
the comparative study of the typographical and cli- 
matic conditions of the chief-centers, as well as by 
many unmistakable analogies of "climatic fevers" 
and certain enteric diseases which can be traced to 
purely subjective causes. The swampiest districts of 
Central and South America — the Peninsula of Yuca- 
tan, Tehuantepec, the Brazilian province of Entre- 
Kios, the Orinoco Valley, the "Gran Chaco," or 
monster-swamp, between Bolivia and Paraguay — en- 
joy an almost perfect immunity from pyrexial dis- 
eases, while Vera Cruz and Pernambuco with their 
zone of barren sand-hills, or La Guayra, Havana, and 
Rio Janerio, with their mountainous vicinity, are sub- 
ject to yearly visits of the plague. During our last 
two epidemics the vast Arkansas river-swamps, and 
the coast-fens of Georgia, Florida, and Texas, es- 
caped, while Vicksburg and Memphis, on their dry 
bluffs, and Chattanooga, at an elevation of six hun- 



HOUSEHOLD REMEDIES. 85 

dred feet above sea-level, suffered more in propor- 
tion to their populations than any place this side of 
Vera Cruz. During every fever-epidemic the focus of 
the disease seems to be some commercial city of the 
tropics or sub-tropics, a town uniting torrid summer 
climate with the presence of a large number of north- 
ern foreigners. 

In all fevers ascribed to a malarial origin the suc- 
cess of the conventional mode of treatment depends 
chiefly upon the efficacy of chemical antiseptics which 
temporarily" suppress or pallitate the symptoms of the 
disease, but (aside from the deleterious after-effects 
of such drugs) the disease itself can be cured only by 
the removal of the cause. That cause is the inability 
of the vital powers to withstand the influence of 
moist heat from within and without. The proper 
method of cure, therefore, consists in diminishing the 
thermal product of that complex cause, either by 
flight to a colder climate, or by adopting a less calo- 
rific regimen. The latter expedient is the cheaper 
and generally the shorter and safer one ; and in no 
other disease is the remedy more clearly indicated by 
the promptings of instinct. The premonitory stage 
of yellow fever is characterized by an intense longing 
for refrigeration: fresh air, cold water, cooling fruits 
or fr ait-extracts. The fever-dreams of an ague- 
patient are crowded with visions of tree-shade and 
mountain-brooks. Even "chills" are often accompanied 
by a burning thirst ; and during the cold stage of an 
intermittent fever the temperature of the system is 
actually higher than during the sweating stage ; ae- 



86 HOUSEHOLD REMEDIES. 

cording to Dr. Francis Home, respectively 104° and 
99°. 

In the first place, remove the patient to the airiest 
available room in the house. The art of house-cool- 
ing seems to have been lost with the ancient civiliza- 
tion of Southern Europe. There is not a room in the 
narrowest alley of the Naples Jew quarter where open 
windows and ten cent's worth of ice would fail to 
lower the temperature from twenty to thirty degrees 
below that of the outer atmosphere. Create a draught 
and if possible a cross-draught, without fear that the 
admission of air from a sun-blistered courtyard, for in- 
stance, would make the room equally uncomfortable ; 
the thermal contrast itself will create an air current, 
and that draught will be cooler to the feeling than 
stagnant air of an actually lower temperature. The 
shade of a leafy tree is never more grateful than when 
the surrounding fields tremble under the rays of a 
vertical sun. The evaporation of ice-water, or even 
of common cistern-water, will greatly aid the good 
work. Pour it into flat basins, tubs, etc., and place 
them in the center of the room, or get a wheelbarrow 
full of unglazed bricks, that can be procured at any 
pottery, put them close together on the floor and 
sprinkle them from time with cold water. The water 
will soak into the porous mass and evaporate more 
rapidly than from an impervious surface. A bundle 
of bathing-sponges or a sheaf of bulrushes, suspend- 
ed from the ceiling and sprinkled from time to time, 
will serve the same purpose ; and where ice is cheap, 
a dog's-day sirocco can be easily reduced to an April 
breeze, 



CLIMATIC FEVERS. 87 

But the best time to begin the refrigeration cure is 
an hour after sunset. On this continent alone, the 
night-air superstition costs annually the lives of about 
fifteen thousand human beings ; for at least one-half 
of the thirty thousand North Americans who succumb 
every year to yellow fever, ague, and congestive chills 
could have saved themselves by opening their bed- 
room windows. In the jungles of our Southern Gulf 
coast thousands of hunters and lumbermen breathe 
with impunity the air of the very swamps to whose 
neighborhood the city dweller ascribes the summer 
epidemics. Their febrifuge is the cooling night wind, 
for here, as in the dyspeptic shopkeeper cities and con- 
sumptive factory towns, each night labors to undo the 
mischief of each day. The flat-boat men who often 
contract the ague during a week's delay in a Southern 
inland port, need no quinine by the time they reach 
New Orleans, a week or two of chill night-camps on 
the open river having cured them as effectually as 
the first November frosts cure the chlorotic city- 
dweller. 

For direct refrigeration a sponge-bath is more 
effective as well as less disagreeable than a wet-pack ; 
though an air-bath, before an open window (under 
cover of night) is preferable to both, if the strength 
of the patient is reduced by a protracted ague or in- 
judicious medication. In obstinately sultry weather 
an ice-pack will afford almost immediate relief — a pail- 
ful of crushed ice, stuffed into linen bags and wrapped 
for a few minutes around the neck and arms, or 
around the wrists of a bedridden patient. 

" Stuff a cold and starve a fever " was, in regard to 



88 HOUSEHOLD REMEDIES. 

fevers at least, not a bad plan, when " stuffing " im- 
plied a monster dose of beef and beer. But the want 
of appetite which characterizes all febrile affections 
is properly defined as only an abhorrence of calorific 
food — flesh, hot soups, and greasy-made dishes. The 
mere sight of such comestibles is enough to aggravate 
the sick headache that preceeds yellow fever and fol- 
lows an ague- fit, and, when the idea of food has be- 
come closely associated with visions of smoking grease 
the voice of instinct is apt to be in favor of total absti- 
nence. But that protest is always accompanied by a 
passionate craving for cooling drinks, which easily 
connives at an admixture of solid nourishment, after 
a refrigerating diet has once been tasted in the form 
of cooling fruits. Cold sweet milk, whipped eggs 
with a drop of lemon-flavor, a sherbet of ice water, 
sugar and orange-juice, offered to the rebellious 
stomach of a fever-patient, are not only tolerated, 
but absorbed with an almost conscious satisfaction. 
Fruits, however, rank first among the dietetic febri- 
fuges of nature, especially tropical fruits. "Under 
the exhaustion of a blazing sun," says Sir Emerson 
Tennent, " no more exquisite physical enjoyment can 
be imagined than the chill and fragrant flesh of the 
pineapple, or the abundant juice of the mango, which 
when freshly pulled, feels almost as cool as ice water. 
... It would almost seem as if plants possessed a 
power of producing cold, analogus to that exhibited 
by animals in producing heat. Dr. Hooker, when in 
the valley of the Ganges found the fresh, milky juice 
of the mudar (calotropis) to be but 72°, while the 



CLIMATIC FEVEES, 89 

clamp sand in the bed of the river where it grew was 
from 90° to 104°." 

With a biscuit or two, a sliced pineapple, two or 
three bananas or a couple of oranges, will make a 
sufficient meal ; and in very warm weather bananas 
alone would do for a couple of days, for the nutritive 
value of saccharine fruit is generally underestimated ; 
our next relatives, whose digestive organs are a close 
copy of our own, are exclusively frugivorous, and 
withal the most active and indefatigable creatures of 
their size. With cold, sweetened orangeade alone, 
the physicians of the Spanish-American hospitals 
often support their comatose patients for days to- 
gether. 

These remedies should be applied in the very 
beginning of the disease. As soon as the yawning 
and stretching languor of a bilious remittent an- 
nounces the approach of an ague-fit, the patient 
should prepare for refrigeration by sponge-baths, 
air-baths, and rest in a shady, well-ventilated 
room. The thirst that announces the needs of the 
^internal organism should be freely indulged with 
Afresh spring-water (or the next best thing, filtered and 
ice-cooled cistern- water). I would not prevent a 
fever-stricken child from drinking five quarts of water 
in as many half-hours, if its system craves it, for, be- 
sides its refrigerating influence, fresh water fulfills an 
important expurgative purpose, and helps to elimin- 
ate the catalytic germs of the tainted blood. During 
the shivering stage of a fever there would not seem 
to be much need of artificial refrigeration ; but I have 
noticed that a fit of "chills" is far more supportable 



90 HOUSEHOLD BEMEDIES. 

if the craving for a warm cover is justified by an ex- 
ternal cause. In a sultry room a woolen blanket 
is apt to turn a shaking fit into the ugliest symptoms 
of the hot and headachy stage, while in a cold room 
the shivering patient (covered up, but with his head 
exposed to a cooling draught) soon finds relief in a 
quiet slumber. The ancient Romans cured their 
fever-patients in subterranean grottoes, and where 
the means of refrigeration are as cheap as in the 
New Orleans ice-factory I would keep the yellow-fever 
ward of a hospital at a maximum temperature of 55 Q . 
and at night, if possible, below 50°. 

Wet-packs and a frequent change of posture greatly 
alleviate the throbbing pains in the loins, where the 
pyrexial process of a yellow-fever paroxysm seems to 
center its activity. * These pains are often accompa- 
nied by a stupor-like oppression of the brain and are 
grievously aggravated by a stagnant atmosphere. 

In the tent-camp of Medellin, to where the French 
authorities had removed the fever-stricken paupers of 
Vera Cruz, I noticed that comatose symptoms occurred 
only in a small minority of cases, while their worst 
forms were frequently observed in all the city hospi- 
tals, except the excellently ventilated infirmary of the 
Catholic orphan asylum. In common ague, fresh air 
alone, and without the aid of fruit and ice (which 
cannot be readily procured in some inland districts of 

* "It is curious that the maximum of the heat observed after 
death should have been in the thigh, and the minimum in the brain 
Dr. Bennett Dowler, of New Orleans, ascertained it to be (ten min- 
utes after death) 102 in the brain, 109 in axilla, and 113 in the thigh." 
—(Carpenter's Physiology, " p. 619). 



CLIMATIC FEVEK8. 91 

our Southern States) will modify the paroxysms suffi- 
ciently to reduce them to debilitating rather than dis- 
tressing symptoms — tremors, followed by perspiration, 
and a cerebral excitation somewhat resembling the 
first effects of certain intoxicants. 

During the hot stage of an intermittent, delirium 
can be obviated by keeping the patient in a half-sitting 
posture, and cooling his temples from time to time 
with a wet towel, or, in extreme cases with the above- 
mentioned ice-pack.* After a profuse perspiration 
the pulse will gradually become normal, and the fever- 
ish brain pass into a sort of twilight state between 
slumber and more or less fantastic day-dreams, but 
without obstreperous symptoms and without oppres- 
sive headaches. 

All this, however, on condition that the bark of Cin- 
chona calisaya is left severely alone. I have seen 
quinine-drunk patients break away from their nurses 
and rush out into the street like Indian amuck-run- 
ners, or sit moaning on their beds, freed from the 
febrile diathesis, but afflicted with ear-aches that pierce 
the head like twinges of neuralgia, and often impair 
the hearing for months together. Quinine sticks to 
the system like mercury, and I doubt if there is such 
a thing as perfect recovery from the effects of its pro- 
tracted use. Strychnine, bitter-orange peel, Valeriana, 



* Six parts of sulphate of soda and four parts of hydrochloric 
acid make an effective freezing mixture. The first piece of ice 
thus obtained can be used with common salt to continue the froez- 
ing process, and, mixed in a tin cup, will reduce the temperature 
of water in a smaller cup, immersed in the mixture, by as much 
as thirty degrees. 



92 HOUSEHOLD BEMEDIES. 

arsenic, snake-root, are equally objectionable, and of- 
ten produce after-effects that are ascribed to other 
' causes, or to a lingering nervousness induced by the 
fever itself. Besides, the removal of the cause is the 
only radical fever-cure ; chemical antiseptics merely 
palliate the symptoms, as a cloth mantle would smother 
a fire, till it gets strong enough to break out through 
cloth and all. Frost kills out flies where arsenic fails. 
By the refrigeration-cure the zymotic disease germs 
are, as it were, frozen out ; the blood-heat of the sys- 
tem is reduced below the temperature which is a con- 
dition of their development. The quinine treatment 
is an attempt to poison them. For a time that attempt 
may prove successful, but the patient becomes a slave 
to his drug, and, till frosts sets in, one of the most 
nauseous of all medicines has to be applied from week 
to week, and generally in increasing doses. But, if 
the febrile diathesis has been subdued by a refriger- 
ating diet, the most ordinary precautions suffice to 
keep the disease in abeyance. The cause has been 
removed. I will venture the prediction that the zy- 
motic agency of climatic f evers,as of tuberculosis will be 
traced to the development of a living organism, and 
I suspect that Nature's effort to eliminate the tainted 
humors constitutes the critical symptoms of the affec- 
tion, while the periodicity of the disease is due to 
the periodical redevelopment of the parisites from 
their ova or vital rudiments. In the vomit of cruor 
that precedes the crisis of yellow fever, the system 
seems to make an attempt to eradicate the evil by a 
direct extrusion of the tainted particles of the blood 
(the fibrine and red corpuscles), at the risk of exhaust- 



CLIMATIC FEVERS. 93 

ing the vital pabulum by the impoverishment of the 
humors. The success of that heroic remedy ends the 
trouble ; yellow fever hardly ever attacks the same 
person more than once. 

Ague, on the contrary, recurs with the return of every 
favorable opportunity nay, persons who have suffered 
most from remittent fevers are especially liable to re- 
lapses, and, if the disease is allowed to continue, its 
result is the same impoverishment of the blood (chlo- 
rosis and jaundice) which the paroxysm of yellow fe- 
ver effects in a few hours. It is not safe to count 
upon an earfy frost or immediate relief by a change 
of climate (in midsummer, especially, when the 
weather is often as warm at the borders of the Artie 
Circle as fifty degrees farther south). And the persis- 
tent neglect of dietetic precautions under reliance on 
the prophylactic effect of a weekly dose of quinine 
would be strictly analagous to an attempt to legalize 
the sins of Don Juan by saturating the system with 
mercury. 

In yellow fever large doses of quinine directly in- 
crease the chief danger of the disease by arresting the 
excretion of uric acid, which, passing into the circu- 
lation, has been recognized as a main canse of the 
convulsions and coma which so often inaugurate the 
hopeless stage of the deliquium. 

During the delirious paroxysm of climatic fevers, 
ice-water maybe administered like medicine by spoon- 
fuls, but solid food should never be forced upon the pa- 
tient. When coolness, sweetness, and fruity flavors 
cannot make a dish acceptable to the appetite, its ob- 
trusion upon the stomach would do more harm than 



94 HOUSEHOLD REMEDIES. 

good, and it is a great mistake to suppose that even 
total abstinence could in sucli cases aggravate the 
danger of the disease. At San Nazaro, near Brescia, 
the Austrian hospital-town after the battle of Solfer- 
ino, a wounded Hungarian sergeant, whose three tent- 
comrades had died of typhns syncopalis (" spotted 
fever "), cured himself of the same disease by an abso- 
lute fast of eight days, not including the two days of 
his transport from the battle field, when he had taken 
a cup of coffee and a mouthful of bread. In malig- 
nant cases of yellow fever the revulsions of the bowels 
often invert the digestive process for days together ; 
chyle, as well as the nutritive elements of the blood, 
are forced back upon the stomach and disgorged in 
that eruption of cruor commonly called the " black- 
vomit " ;) and the ingestion of food would, under such 
circumstances, only aggravate the gastric distress. 

With the power of assimilation the appetite for 
solid nourishment gradually returns ; but this re-es- 
tablishment, of the digestive process is greatly re- 
tarded by the obtrusion of a distasteful diet, especi- 
ally animal food and all greasy made-dishes. The pe- 
culiar dietetic whims of fever patients, their sudden 
cravings for a special kind of food, drink, or condi- 
ment, can with certain exceptions (" or the revival of 
an alcohol passion") be indulged without danger, and 
generally indicate a favorable turn of the crisis. " Ta 
se va d volver ; pide chile " — " He'll soon be all right ; 
he's asking for chile" (red pepper or pepper-sauce) 
— is a standing form of congratulation among the 
Spanish-American friends of a yellow-fever conval- 
escent. But even with chile they would hesitate to 



CLIMATIC EEVEKS. 95 

tempt him with garbanzas or guisado, well knowing 
that the mere smell of greasy viands is often enough 
to bring on a relapse of the vomit. Disagreeable 
smells of any kind are, in fact, a potent adjuvant, if 
not independent cause, of a febrile diathesis. " A 
manufactory of artificial manure," says Professor 
Grainger, " formerly existed immediately opposite 
Chistchurch workhouse, Spitalfields, which building 
was occupied'by about four hundred children with a 
few adult paupers. Whenever the works were ac- 
tively carried on, particularly when the wind blew in 
the direction of the house, there were produced nu- 
merous cases of fever, of an intractable and typhoid 
form. . . The proprietor at last was compelled to close 
his establishment, and the children returned to their 
ordinary health. Five months afterward, the works 
recommenced ; a day or two subsequently, the wind 
blowing from the manufactory, a most powerful stench 
pervaded the building. In the night following forty- 
five of the boys, whose dormitories faced the manu- 
factory, were again seized with severe diarrhoea,while 
the girls, whose dormitories were in a more distant 
part, and faced in another direction, escaped. The 
manufactory having been again suppressed, there was 
no subsequent return of the diarrhoea, " (Eeport on 
the Hygienic Condition of the Metropolis."). 

The Turkish custom-house officers fumigate their 
quarantine-buildings with a powerful but agreeably 
aromatic kind of incense-powder, which seems to 
serve all purposes of disinfection, and could in many 
cases be substituted for the carbolic-acid libations 
that fill our hospitals with their scandalous odors. 



96 HOUSEHOLD EEMEDIES. 

To the stomach of a fever-patient, however, the smell 
of boiling fat is still more offensive, and kitchen-fumes 
should be carefully excluded from the sick-room. 

If these precautions are adopted in time, a common 
remmittent generally terminates with the third fit, and 
yellow fever takes the form of a "walking case," as 
the Memphis physicians call that mild type of the 
disease which limits its symptoms to a few shivering 
fits, and a night's headache, and seems, in fact, to be 
nothing but a modified sort of a summer ague. 
Every pyrexial affection is essentially an enteric dis- 
disorder, a bowel-complaint, and dietetic manage- 
ment alone will generally insure a favorable issue of 
the disease. The Spanish cigar-peddlers and Span- 
ish and Italian fruit-venders of New Orleans inhabit 
the vilest alleys of the " French quarter," but their 
frugality has saved them again and again, when their 
flesh eating neighbors died by hundreds. I have 
known vegetarians to survive in tenements where the 
rooms above, below, and around them w r ere filled with 
fever-stricken families — decimated from week to week, 
dreading removal to the hospital like a sentence of 
death, but sticking to their flesh-pots and alcohol 
" tonics." How fruit, the chief febrifuge of nature, 
came ever to be suspected of being the cause of pyrex- 
ial disorders, would be utterly inexplicable without 
the analogies of the post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy 
— our liability to mistake a coincidence for a causal 
connection. In cold weather the hyperborean biped 
retreats to his unventilated den and contracts a catarrh, 
which he ascribes, not to its true cause, foul air, but 
to cold air, having noticed that winter and pulmonary 



CLIMATIC FEVERS. 97 

affections are annual concomitants. Fruits, like 
countless other products of nature, are most abun- 
dant when they are most needed, and have for ages 
preserved the health of our tropical ancestors; but 
their carnivorous decendant ascribes his affliction, 
not to his daily beefsteaks, but to the occasional 
peaches and watermelons of which he happened to 
partake about the time the fever took hold of him. 
At the end of the year, when fruits become scarce, 
fevers too disappear, and the proof seems complete. 
Inductive logic ; but the precipitate follower of Vis- 
count Verulam fails to explain the fact that in the 
swampiest and hottest districts of the Eastern Con- 
tinent fevers and fruits exclude each other like science 
and superstition, and the still stranger fact that hun- 
dreds of Northlanders who scrupulously abstain from 
fruit are nevertheless victimized whenever they brave 
the sun of the lower latitudes. In cholera the fruit- 
delusion may have derived a color plausibility from 
the circumstance that persons who have for months 
subsisted upon beef and farinaceous food are liable 
to an attack of diarrhoea after their first experiments 
with a more digestible diet. For analogous reasons 
a long incarceration makes a prisoner unable to bear 
the fresh air and clear light of the outer world. The 
Creoles use pepper enough with their meat to dispense 
with other antiseptics, and yet eat fruit with every 
meal as the French serve a dessert of cakes and 
raisins — "pour la bonne bouche. " A dime's worth per 
day for every man, woman, and child, of such fruits 
as oranges, melons, or " Chickasaw plums, " that can 
be bought in almost every Southern town, would soon 



98 HOUSEHOLD REMEDIES. 

ruin the business of the quinine-manufacturers and 
reduce the trade of the " bitters " distillers to cus- 
tomers who like to drink whisky under some more re- 
spectable name. 

The Spaniards divide all articles of diet into comidas 
frias and comidas calientes ; but their definition of 
calorific food does not quite coincide with Liebig's 
theory.* According to the nitrogenous and non- 
nitrogenons system, starch, sugar, gums, are " respi- 
ratory " food, and as exclusively heat-making as fat, 
while the experienced taught South American would 
unhesitatingly class starchy potatoes and starchy 
corn-bread with the comidas frias, the " coooling 
comestibles"; and flesh, eggs, and rich cheese 
with the heat - producers. Cold milk would be 
assigned to the former class, and, together with 
unleavened and " unshortened " bread, fruit, or fruit- 
jelly, constitutes the dietetic specifics for convales- 
cents from climatic fevers. Subacid fruits are, on the 
whole, more cooling than purely saccharine ones 
(figs , for instance) ; but bananas, though sweetish 
rather than acid, are, par excellence, an anti-fever food, 
being refreshing, palatable, and nutritive, as well as 
exceedingly digestible. Oranges, biscuits, and cold 
water, during the critical stage of the disease — milk, 
bread, and bananas, after the crisis is past — ought to 

♦Professor Draper (" Human Physiology" p. 27 ) warns us 
that Liebig's classification has been only ' ' adopted for the sake of 
convenience, " having no natural foundation. Funke, in his 
1 ' Lehrbuch der Phyciologie, " p. 186, accepts it with considera- 
ble reservation. Verdeil, Robin, Muller, and Moleschott, re- 
ject it as wholly untenable. 



CLIMATIC FEVERS. 99 

be the standard regimen in our semi-tropical seaport 
towns ; inland and farther north substituting pears 
or baked apples, and perhaps sweet-potatoes, for 
bananas' and watermelons for oranges. A frugal diet 
has the further advantage of obviating the tendency 
to fretfulness and splenetic humors which results 
from the use of animal food in indigestible quantities, 
i. e., in hot weather from a very moderate quantum. 
In midsummer, persons of a " nervous temper" could 
often cure their disposition by a change of diet, 
Mental energy exercises a remarkable influenc on the 
idiopathic symptoms of climatic fever. Pluck is a 
febrifuge. Men of exceptional will-force, or under 
the stimulus of an exceptional enthusiasm, contrive 
to hold the foe at bay ; they keep on their legs till 
their work is done, even though the presence of a 
febrile diathesis continues to manifest itself by in- 
direct symptoms. During the carnival of chaos fol- 
lowing the end of our civil war and preceeding the 
collapse of the Mexican "Empire," the Sheriff of 
Cameron County, Texas, undertook to escort a Mexican 
prisoner across tho Rio Grande, in order to save him 
from a mob who unjustly but obstinately accused him 
of complicity in the "Cortina riot." It was a ticklish 
job, but the sheriff, though prostrated by a malignant 
ague and almost blind from the use of quinine, de- 
clined to intrust his protege to a deputy, and preferred 
to rely on luck and his reputation as a "dead shot." 
Like most pistol virtuosos^ he was able to fire off- 
hand, and was confident that no shakiness would in- 
terfere with the accuracy of his aim, but was rather 
uneasy on account of his impaired eyesight. But on 



100 HOUSEHOLD KEMEDIES. 

the morning of the critical day his fever left him, to- 
gether with all sequelae and concomitant symptoms, 
and he returned, with the conviction that the ex- 
pedition had saved his own life as well as that of his 
prisoner. 

Even scientific enthusiasm may exercise a similar 
prophylactic effect, and has supported more than one 
African explorer and East Indian officer whom no 
quinine could have saved from the combined influence 
of solar and animal heat. The trouble is, that the ef- 
fect is so apt to subside with the cause : heroes and 
explorers who survive a summer campaign in the wil- 
derness die upon the return to their comfortable win- 
ter quarters. The fate of Sir Stamford Baffles is a 
melancholy instance : A naturalist, a patriot, and a 
zealous philanthropist, his triple enthusiasm carried 
him safely through the swampiest regions of the 
Sunda Archipelago, and, as long as his expedition re- 
quired his personal presence, Fortune seemed to favor 
him in every enterprise ; but, upon his return to his 
palatial residence at Bencoolen, he and all his house- 
hold were prostrated by the jungle-fever, and, at the 
end of a life, perhaps unequaled for successful activ- 
ity, he found himself bankrupt, childless, and hope- 
less. At a time when beef or pork steaks and a bottle 
of porter were the essentials of a Christian breakfast, 
a vegetarian official of the East India Company might 
have defied ill-luck to outweigh the advantage of per- 
manent good health where good health obtained the 
highest premium. Even now, by their obstinate ad- 
herence to their native diet, the British residents of 
the East Indies are almost decimated every year, es- 



CLIMATIC FEVERS. 101 

peciaily where the zymotic tendency of that diet is 
aggravated by the effect of fonl air.* 

For on the other hand it is equally sure that strict 
attention to ventilation and a liberal use of cold air 
and sponge-baths will palliate the effects of many 
dietetic sins. The patient has either to adapt his 
diet to the temperature of the South, or adapt his 
temperature to the diet of the North. Experience 
has taught the Creoles to take things coolly. "With all 
their excitable temperament, they avoid violent out- 
bursts of passion ; they do not overwork themselves ; 
they preserve the even tenor of their way, even if they 
are behind time and know that their dinner is getting 
cold. And, above all, they indulge in liberal siestas. 
Hard work in the hot sun, with a stomach full of 
greasy viands, obliges the vital force to resist the 
triple fire of a furnace heated by the sun-rays, by 
exercise, and by calorific food. Brain-work, too, is 
apt, in hot weather, to exert an undue strain on the 
vital energies, and to complicate the difficulties of the 
digestive apparatus. Cold air is a peptic stimulant, 
but even in the North a man cannot labor with his 
brain without impeding the labors of his stomach ; 
but, in the languid atmosphere of a southern marsh- 
land, that impediment becomes an absolute preven- 
tion, and the brain-worker who eats for the purpose 

* "In the [East Indian] jails under British control there are 
usually confined no fewer than 40,000 prisoners, and the a vera ire 
annual mortality of the whole was recently ten per cent., rising in 
some cases to twenty-six per cent., or more thah one in four." — 
Dr. MacKinnon's "Treatise on the Public Health of Bengal," 
Cawnpore, 1848, chap. 1, 



102 HOUSEHOLD REMEDIES. 

of nourishing his organism had better save his food 
for supper than oblige his stomach to carry it for half 
a day in an undigested condition. For during that 
half day putrescent decomposition anticipates the 
work of gastric disintegration ; the ingesta ferment, 
catalytic humors pass into the circulation and prepare 
the way for the reception and development of zymotic 
germs from without. The hygienic alternative is, 
therefore, a long siesta, or a considerable postpone- 
ment of the dinner-hour. South of Cape Hatteras, 
Nature exacts an account for every superfluous act 
that tends to raise the temperature of the system by 
a single degree. Keep cool becomes the first com- 
mandment of her sanitary code. He who scrupulously 
avoids anger, enthusiasm, and other calorific passions, 
who performs the principal part of the day's work in 
the cool of the morning, and eats his principal meal 
in the cool of the evening, who rests during the hot- 
test hour of the afternoon, and takes active exercise 
only in the swimming school, may indulge in the 
dietetic prerogatives of the higher latitudes ; Nature 
will condone his beefsteaks, pork-fritters, and some 
of his cocktails ; his mince-pies will not rise and bear 
witness against him. 

But the happier biped who can waive those preroga- 
tives will free his stomach from the necessity of di- 
gesting winter food in a summer climate, and, in re- 
turn, will enjoy the freedom of the land, the privilege 
to work, play, eat, rest, laugh, or get mad, at any 
time he pleases. He has reconciled himself to Nature, 
and shares the natural rights of the creatures who 
have not forfeited their earthly paradise ; for the arti- 



CLIMATIC FEVERS. 103 

ficial comforts of the North are, after all, only more or 
less imperfect imitations of the gratuitous luxuries 
which our forefathers enjoyed in their tropical garden 
home. 



CHAPTER IV. 



ASTHMA. 



It has been said that no doctrine can ever attain a 
large degree of popularity without containing some 
admixture of truth. The rare exceptions from that 
rule do not include that most preposterous of all 
medical theories, the "Brunonian System of Physics." 
John Brown, M. D., of Preston, Scotland, divided all 
disorders of the human organism into "sthenic" and 
"asthenic" diseases : the former produced by an ex- 
cess of vitality, and to be counteracted by bleeding 
and cathartics ; the latter arising from a defect 
of vital power, and to be cured by beefsteaks and 
brandy, etc. The grain of truth in the chaff-barrel of 
absolute nonsense is the pathological influence of 
asthenia, or a deficiency of vital power. Impaired 
vitality cannot be restored by alcoholic stimulants, 
but its causal connection with a large number of 
functional disorders admits of no doubt. Every pro- 
cess of the animal organism derives the impulse of 
(104) 



ASTHMA. 105 

its normal performance from a reserve fund of vital 
energy and the depletion of this fund impairs the 
efficiency of the organic functions. A man may be 
too tired to sleep. A child may be too feeble to 
breathe, too weak to assimilate its food. Exhaustion 
alone may lead to that total suspension of the vital 
process which we call death. 

But generally asthenia is only a proximate cause of 
disease. It reveals a pre-established morbid diathesis 
by affecting the weakest part of the organism, and its 
influence becomes thus localized. The affected part 
may become the center of attraction for a variety of 
asthenic agencies, for each successive attack increases 
the morbid diathesis, and thus, as it were, confirms 
the pathological precedent. This convergence of 
asthenic influences is most strikingly illustrated in the 
pathology of the asthmatic affections. Asthma, or 
chronic dyspnoea, a torpor of the semi-voluntary 
muscles which effect the process of respiration, has 
thus far not been traced to its original cause. Pro- 
fessor Reese ascribes it to a spasm of the muscular 
fibers inclosing the bronchial tubes ; Dr. E. Bock de- 
fines it as a diminished elasticity of the pulmonary 
air-cells, caused by an undue dilation of the lungs 
(as in violent exercise). Villemin considers it as a 
purely nervous affection. In its most frequent form, 
however, it seems to be a legacy of arrested tuber- 
culosis — an intermittent affection induced by a ten- 
dency to a pulmonary torpor that may remain latent 
for an indefinite time, but unmistakably connected 
with an asthenic proximate cause. Chronic asthma, 
in the strictest sense of the word, occurs only during 



106 HOUSEHOLD BEMEDIES. 

the last stage of pulmonary consumption. When the 
lungs have been reduced to a certain degree, their ut- 
most activity is insufficient to supply the needs of the 
organism, and the patient suffers the tortures of an 
irremediable air-famine. The automatic action of the 
lungs has to be supplemented by a desperate muscu- 
lar effort, the motions of the contracted organ be- 
come spasmodic and wheezing, the sufferer is unable 
to breathe in an horizontal position, and after a short 
slumber awakens with a sense of suffocation. But a 
chronic disposition to all these symptoms in their ex- 
treme malignity may exist without a phthisical 
diathesis, and remain latent for weeks and years. 
The exciting cause generally operates without a mo- 
ment's warning. During the laborious digestion of a 
heavy dinner, or even after a moderate meal, eaten 
on a sultry day, the process of respiration begins to 
alternate with inert pauses, relieved at first by an oc- 
casional yawn, by-and-by only by a violent gasp ; 
a feeling of uneasiness supervenes, the air-deficit be- 
comes more and more perceptible, and the patient 
suddenly realizes that he is booked for a five days' 
struggle with a pulmonary torpor. Changes of tem- 
perature, a sudden thaw in midwinter, or a sultry day 
after a protracted rain, have a similar tendency, but 
the most frequent proximate cause is violent mental 
emotion — fear, anxiety, and especially suppressed 
anger. Nothing else so strikingly illustrated the in- 
timate interaction of mental and physical conditions 
as this sudden pathological effect of a purely phy- 
sical cause. In the same instant almost, when a fit of 
wrath — even in the form of a transient irritation 



ASTHMA. 107 

accelerates the throbbing of the heart, its reaction on 
the respiratory organs betrays itself by a spasmodic 
gasp, the patient instinctively clutches his ribs and 
tries to master the incipient mischief , but emotional 
asthma is a form of the disease that can rarely be 
nipped in the bud ; the primum mobile cannot be re- 
voked; the sufferer may think himself lucky to get off 
with a result of twenty-four hours' misery. Excess- 
ive exercise — lifting weights, running, wrestling, etc. 
— is merely an adjuvant of the fore-named cause. 
"With his mind at ease, an asthmatic may chop cord- 
wood on the warmest day in the year, carry corn- 
sacks, or run up-hill till his lungs are ready to burst 
with panting ; that panting will be entirely distinct 
from the ineffectual gasps of the air-famine. But, 
under the depressing influence of mental worry, an 
exhausting physical effort will bring on a fit of asthma 
as surely as heat and exercise would result in perspi- 
ration. 

Among the rarer proximate causes are loss of blood, 
starvation, nervous exhaustion from mental overwork, 
sexual excesses, and sudden fright, or rather the 
shudder which sometimes follows the nervous shock 
produced by a real or imaginary danger, as a slip of 
the foot at the brink of a steep declivity, a snake- 
panic, the unexpected visit of a stranger, etc. Nau- 
sea in some of its forms may produce an analogous 
effect. " A young lady " says a correspondent of the 
London " Lancet, " was sitting at dinner, apparently 
in perfect health. She partook, among other things, 
of some rabbit, and in about ten minutes or so after 
she had eaten of it she was attacked with acute or- 



108 HOUSEHOLD REMEDIES. 

ticaria (nettle-rash), showing large erythematous 
patches and wheals very prominent on the face and 
neck. She then was seized with violent attacks of 
spasmodic asthma, which obliged her to leave the 
table. I inquired if she had ever suffered this before, 
and she informed me she had after eating hare."* 

Chronic asthma is a warm weather disease. The 
first frosts mitigates its worst symptoms as surely as 
it would cure a fever or relieve insomnia, and " hay- 
asthma," often ascribed to the effect of some vegeta- 
ble pollen, is probably a consequence of the relaxing 
influence of the first warm weather ; for in midwinter, 
when the air is entirely free from vegetable spors, a 
single mild day, following upon a protracted frost, 
may produce symptons exactly resembling those of a 
hay-catarrh. Spasmodic asthma is often aggravated 
by a humid atmosphere, and its worst attacks are apt 
to occur at the end of the year, on damp November 
days, or during a thaw, following a bracing frost. 
The complication of chronic bronchitis, sometimes 
described as bronchial asthma, should properly be 
called bronchial congestion, and differs from a as- 
thmatic affection as a constipation differs from a gas- 
tric spasm. Asthma proper occurs under three forms: 
phthisical asthma (in the last stage of pulmonary 
consumption), chronic asthma, and acute spasmodic 
asthma. In the latter phase the disease recurs at 
longer intervals than in its chronic forms and limits its 
attacks to a few minutes or hours, but involves a greater 



* Quoted in the St. Louis " Eclectic MedicalJournal, "June, 1883 
p. 269. 



ASTHMA. 109 

amount of distress than any other disorder of the 
pulmonary organs — not excepting the pleuritic tor- 
tures of pneumonia. In pneumonia the difficulty of 
breathing consists in its painfulness ; in asthma, in the 
persistent torpor of the respiratory organs. The 
patient feels as if the expansion apparatus of his chest 
were utterly paralyzed, the inhaled breath seems to 
come to the gate of the lungs and no farther ; no 
gasping avails ; the increasing distress of the air hun- 
ger appears only to aggravate the stubbornness of the 
inert organ. The violence of the paroxysm often 
turns the color of the face into a livid purple, the 
throbbing of the heart becomes spasmodic, but, when 
the hopes of the sufferer are almost reduced to the 
supposed euthanasia of strangulation, the rigor sud- 
denly relaxes, a deep gasp fills the lungs to their very 
bottom, and a few minutes after the breathing be- 
comes quiet and regular, and only a cold perspiration 
reminds the patient that he has passed through the 
chill shadow of death. 

As the primary cause of asthma is as yet unknown, 
its diathesis is not directly curable, though its latency 
may be prolonged by avoiding and counteracting the 
well-ascertained proximate causes. The mode of 
treatment varies with this twofold object : prevention 
and palliation — which frequently differ where we \ 
have to deal with spasmodic affections that call for 
the promptest means of relief. Thus horseback-rid- 
ing is an approved cure for epilepsy, but during the 
progress of the fit the application of the specific might 
lead to strange consequences. Yacht-sailing in a 
storm would be a bad way of curing sea-sickrfbss, 



110 HOUSEHOLD BEMEDIES. 

though it diminishes the danger of future attacks. We 
have seen that a strenuous physical effort can under 
circumstances become the direct cause of an asthma- 
paroxysm, yet under proper precautions exercise is 
the best corrective of an asthmatic disposition : for 
all vital vigor is based upon muscular strength. It 
would be a mistake to suppose that the invigoration 
of the lungs alone could be a protection against 
asthma. An asthmatic diathesis may co-exist with a 
perfect freedom from the usual symptoms of weak 
lungs ; nay, chronic asthma seems to counteract the 
development of pulmonary phthisis. The asthmatie 
predisposition seems rather to consist in a general 
want of vital energy, and the object of the treament 
should therefore be the invigoration of the whole sys- 
tem, not only by means of " chest-expanders " alone 
by out-door life, pleasant exercise — such as garden- 
ing, hunting, or co-operative gymnastics — by a free 
use of cold water, and a liberal but non-stimulating 
diet. The latter proviso would exclude a large num- 
ber of comestibles which the Brunonians would en- 
umerate among the essentials of a "tonic regimen" : 
The beef-and-beer cure deals in sham-remedies. We 
are not nourshed by what we eat, but by what we di- 
gest. Plethora is not strength, but often its very 
opposite : the accumulation of expletive fat impairs 
the disease-resisting power of the organism ; a gaunt 
wood-cutter, a wiry peddler or mail-rider, will survive 
epidemics that slaughter hecatombs of stall-fed 
burghers. The modern macrobiots,the long-lived in- 
habitants of the Ionian Archipelago, subsist on figs, 
goat-milk, and maize bread ; the herculean natives 



ASTHMA. Ill 

of the eastern Caucasus, live on honey, barly-cakes 
and poor cheese. The self-made Samson of modern 
times, Dr. Winship, of Boston, satisfied his craving 
for animal food with an occasioal box of oiled sar- 
dines, and, on a diet of fruit and farinaceous dishes, 
spiced with daily gymnastics, made his body a com- 
plex of superhuman muscles and sinews. A constitu- 
tion, built up after that pattern, might not secure the 
possessor against heart-disease, nor — if he confined 
himself to in-door gymnastics — against consumption, 
but it would insure him against asthma. In ninety- 
nine out of a hundred cases, an asthmatic disposition 
is combined with a deficient muscular development. 

The pathological peculiarities of the disease make 
it safest to begin the movement-cure in mid-minter, 
and suspend it during premature spring weather, and 
again during the moist, hot weeks of early summer 
— June being, par exellence, the asthma month of the 
year. I have known people who could foretell the week 
when they had to get their " asthma-weeds " ready. 
By a permanent suspension of his exercise an hygienic 
gymnast would gradually lose the gained vantage- 
ground, but during a few days' pause the unemployed 
surplus of vital energy is put at the disposition of the 
organism. Such pauses, therefore, become advisable 
whenever the premonitory symptoms of the disease 
indicate the agency of asthenic influences, and for 
greater security also after every annoying mental 
emotion. The occasions for such annoyances should, 
however, be carefully avoided, even at the risk of in- 
curring the penalties of social non-conformity. An 
asthmatic old Antwerp merchant of my acquaintance 



112 HOUSEHOLD REMEDIES. 

used to retire to his gartenhuys, a little summer-house 
at the farthest end of his garden, whenever his feelings 
became unduly excited, and also after dinner, as he 
had noticed that an interruption of his siesta was apt 
to re-act on his lungs. One afternoon, however, he 
had a visit from a commercial associate who had . 
threatened to break the partnership, but now came to 
lubricate matters and tender a very acceptable peace- 
offering. At his return from the interview Mynheer 
made no attempt to conceal his glee, but suddenly 
became thoughtful and monosyllabic. " What's the 
matter ?"asked his broker, " are you afraid it's a 

trap?" — "No, no," said he, "N is all right, but," 

— with a sigh — " d — n him, anyhow ; it will cost me a 
week's tussle with old Nick." " With the asthma ? 
What ! — the mere excitement ?" — " Yes," he groaned, 
"the talk, the miserable formalities, and the tight 
neck-tie — and right after dinner !" 

Any waste of vital power may bring on a fit of 
spasmodic asthma, and the aggravating effect of m- 
continence is so prompt and so unmistakable that ex- 
perience generally suffices to correct a penchant to 
errors in that respect. Like gout, asthma is a moral 
censor, but its reproofs do not so often come too late. 
With an ordinary amount of will-force, even persons 
of an inherited tendency to asthma may manage for 
years to keep its worst symptoms in abeyance. 

Among the palliatives of spasmodic asthma cold 
water ranks first. A plunge-bath into a pond (or tub) 
of water, of a sufficiently low temperature to produce 
a gasp and a shiver, rarely fails to break the spell of 



ASTHMA. 113 

the suffocating stricture. It is the most reliable 
remedy, for, unlike chemical antispasmodics, it acts 
irrespective of precedents — its efficiency does not de- 
crease with each subsequent application. After the 
second or third time, " asthma-weeds " have to be 
used in almost lethal doses before they produce any 
appreciable effect, though their disagreeable after- 
effects are perceptible enough. For these weeds are 
generally strong narcotic poisons. Tabac de Chine, 
or " Chinese tobacco, " is a mixture of tobacco-leaves 
and inspissated opium. Stramonium (Datura ferox) is 
as virulant as belladonna, and the smoking of the 
leaves produces virtigo, heart-spasms and violent 
headaches. It does relieve asthma, on the principle 
that diseases yield to more serious diseases. Thus 
the languor of dyspepsia can be temporarily relieved 
by alcoholic stimulants, but the dose has to be stead- 
ily increased, till the remedy becomes worse than the 
original evil. Such household remedies as black 
coffee (swallowed by the quart) or sulphur and vine- 
gar fumes are liable to some objection. They help 
once or twice, and afterward only in monster doses. 
Coffee-poisoning, which old habitues avoid by a very 
gradual increase of the dose, is a frequent sequel of 
an asthma-cure by domestic narcotics. The mediaeval 
physicians, with their penchant for heroic remedies, 
cured asthma with actual cautery — the application of 
a hot iron to the ribs of their patients, who naturally 
preferred the risk of suffocation Dr. Zimmermann 
ascertained that the mere proposition of the hellish 
corrective made the delinquent gasp in a way that 
relieved the stricture. But the agreeable disappoint- 



114 HOUSEHOLD REMEDIES. 

ment probably impaired the efficiency of subsequent 
threats; and the chill of a cold plunge-bath never 
fails to produce a contraction of the diaphragm that 
serves the same purpose. 

After the first strangling-spell has been relieved, 
a very simple mechanical contrivance will help to re- 
store the regularity of the respiration . Take a straight 
stick, about six feet long and one inch in diameter, 
and mark it from end to end with deep notches, at 
regular intervals, say two inches apart, with smaller 
subdivisions, as on the beam of a lever-balance. 
Then get a ten-pound lump of pig-iron, or a large 
stone, and gird it with a piece of stout wire, so as to 
let one end of the wire project in the form of a hook. 
The exercise consists in grasping the stick at one end, 
stretching out arm and stick horizontally like a rapier 
at a home thrust ; then draw your arm back, and (still 
keeping the stick horizontal) make your hand touch 
your chin, thrust it out again, draw back, and so on 
till the forearm moves rapidly on a steady fulcrum. 
Next, load the stick — i.e., hook the stone to one of 
the notches and try to move your arm as before. It 
will be hard work now to keep the stick horizontal ; 
even a strong man will find that the effort reacts pow- 
erfully on his lungs ; he will puff as if the respiratory 
engine were working under high pressure. On the 
same principle, the lungs of a half-drowned man may 
be set awork by moving the arms up and down, like 
pump-handles. But the weighted stick, bearing 
against the sinews of the forearm, still increases this 
effect, and overcomes the stricture of the asthmatic 
spasm, as the movement of the loose arms relieves 



ASTHMA. 115 

the torpor of the drowning-asphyxia " (" Physical 
Education," p. 137). 

But a lethargic feeling about the chest still remains 
behind : the spasm has ceased to obstruct the entrance 
of the air, but breathing has still to be effected by an 
effort of the voluntary muscles, as if the lungs were 
yet too weak to perform their proper work. After an 
attack of spasmodic asthma this lethargy may con- 
tinue for twenty-four hours ; in chronic asthma where 
it constitutes the chief symptom of the complaint, it 
may last for a week or two. Next to out-door exercise, 
the best corrective is conversation, laughing and sing- 
ing — and continued vocal effort seems to overcome 
the passive resistance of the torpid organ. Many 
physicians must have noticed that a large proportion 
of their asthma-patients are persons of solitary habits. 
Laughter is a peptic stimulant, while silence and 
brown studies favor dyspepsia, asthma, and sleepless- 
ness. Bed-ridden garret-dwellers can at least talk to 
themselves ; and with the aid of a pet squirrel or a 
copy of the Asthma-Cure Almanac, " may manage to 
organize an occasional private laugh. Wealthy 
bachelors should at once pack a valise, and (as the 
period of their martyrdom will generally coincide 
with the excursion-season) take a steam-boat to some 
popular picnic grove, and associate with the noisiest 
and merrieat of their traveling-companions. Mirth 
itself has a stimulating effect. Sorrow deadens the 
energy of the vital powers, for Nature is too economical 
to prolong a losing game, and, if the burdens of life 
begin to outweigh its pleasures, the organic appara- 
tus gravitates toward a suspension of its functions. 



116 HOUSEHOLD REMEDIES. 

The mainspring has lost its tension. But, if life be- 
comes visibly worth living, the soul procures a new 
lease of vital power ; every organ seems to work with 
a will, and asthenia disappears without the aid of Dr. 
Brown's brandy bottles. " Being happy, " says Lud- 
wig Boerne, " is a talent that can be cultivated " — 
certainly a talent of great hygienic value ; the gift of 
confining the flow of ideas to a pleasant channel, of 
wearing roseate spectacles as others would wear an 
electric belt, of enjoying life by a sheer effort of will- 
force, may be a faculty that can only be exercised 
during a limited period, but that period suffices for 
the cure of various distressing complaints, insomnia 
for instance, and many symptoms of chronic dyspep- 
sia, but especially chronic asthma. Asthma does not 
prevent longevity ; there are people who have smoked 
stramonium-leaves for half a century, and, if they 
had chronicled their experience, they would find 
that in the dullest years they had to light the greatest 
number of pipes. A piece of good news is worth 
bushels of asthma-weeds ; bouyant spirits seem to 
react directly on the stringency of the bronchial tubes 
and the relief thus obtained is not apt to be followed 
by a relapse. 

There is also a curious correlation between asthma 
and close stools. They come and go together. Any 
thorough and permanent aperient serves at the same 
time as an asthma-cure. Drastic purges act only for 
a day or two, and leave the bowelsjin a worse condition 
than before. The cathartic effect of Clauber-Salt, for 
instance, is almast invariably followed by an astrin- 
gent reaction. For a permanent relief of costiveness 



ASTHMA. 117 

a change of diet is the safest plan, and no dietetic ap- 
erient of the Graham school can compare with the three 
legumina— beans, lentils, and peas. Stewed prunes 
rank next, and next such household remedies as black- 
berry-soup clabber and rye-bread, or molasses with 
warm water. But the aperient effect of molasses de- 
creases after each repetition of the dose, while stewed 
peas taken like medicine, three times a day, will prevail 
where Glauber's-salt fails. As an asthma-cure it can 
do no harm to apply the remedy beyond the alimentary 
wants of the system, temporary overeating being a 
lesser evil than continual under-breathing. At the 
end of the second or third day the bowels will yield, 
and the simultaneous improvement of the asthma- 
symptoms is generally permanent. * 



♦Hospitals statistics have revealed the fact that the inhabitants of 
the beer-drinking countries of Southern Germany enjoy a remark- 
able immunity from asthmatic affections, while both among the 
North-German schnapps-drinkers and the abstemious natives of 
Southern France the complaint is almost as frequent as consump- 
tion. In explanation of the parodox some German doctors have 
alleged the " diffusion of the tonic effect " secured b} r the large 
quantity of the Bavarian stimulant ; o thers, the demulcent influ- 
ence of malt-liquors. The key of the enigma, I suspect, is the 
peptic influence of a liberal diluent. Our greasy, pungent, and 
concentrated diet needs a larger admixture of fluids, The dread 
of cold water, and of water-drinking during meals, is a consequence 
of the sadly prevalent delusion that suspects the competency of our 
natural instincts. The food of our arboreal relatives contains at 
least eighty per cent, of pure w^ater ; diet of the grape-cure pa- 
tients about ninety-five per cent. Instinct is a pretty safe guide 
in such matters, and, unless the habitual indulgence in distilled 
liquors has made water distasteful, the stomach craves about a pint 
of fluids for each pound of solid food. Freshwater is healthier 
than beer, but even in the form of lager-beer an abundant diluent 
would relieve the symptoms of gastric distress resulting from a 
daily struggle with an overdose of undiluted viands. 



118 HOUSEHOLD REMEDIES. 

In exceptionally malignant cases it may be neces- 
sary to supplement the legumen-cure by refrigeration 
— sponge-baths, — or artificially cooled bedrooms ; 
and while there is any danger of a relapse it is the 
safest plan to postpone the bed-hour beyond the 
usual time. After rolling and tossing about till re- 
lieved by that form of sleep which the Germans call 
" Ein-Dammern " — the twilight state between sleep- 
ing and waking — the patient is almost sure to start up 
with a feeling of strangulation, but the slumber induced 
by the silence and drowsiness of the small hours is 
not apt to be thus interrupted. Leaving the club- 
house at 11 p. m., or the family circle at 10 ; then a 
few hours with an interesting book, reserved for that 
special purpose ; perhaps a little midnight lunch (but 
no coffee, unless habit has palliated its anti-hypnotic 
effect) ; then a somnolent old story-book ; an easy 
chair within reach of a boot jack, ready to take advan- 
tage of the first drowsy spell — for those spells come 
and go — and a well-timed attempt will secure imme- 
diate success, with large odds in favor of a good 
night's rest. 

An horizontal position aggravates dyspnoea, and 
with a few extra pillows, or by simply raising the 
head of the bedstead, the patient can sleep in a half- 
sitting posture, and should still further assist nature 
by opening the bed-room windows, or removing his 
bed to the airiest place in the house. After a heavy 
supper an unventilated dormitory alone can lethargize 
the lungs to a suffocating degree, for a nightmare is 
nothing but a transient fit of asthma. 

Fresh air, combined with a lung stimulating exercise, 



ASTHMA. 119 

is the last resort in an obstinate case of chronic 
asthma, and a foot- journey in summer adds to those 
stimulants the too often underrated nerve-tonic of 
sunlight. Maurus Nagy, the Hungarian Natur-Doctor, 
used to cure his asthma-patients by making them 
strip to the waist, and keeping them at work in his 
mountain-vineyard. The ancient Romans had estab- 
lishments for regular sun-baths (solaria) ; and I can- 
not help thinking that the robust health of their 
country population had much to do with their habit 
of working bareheaded and bare-shouldered in sunlit 
fields, inbibing vitality at the fountain-head, for the 
same sun that evolved the fern-forests of the Miocene 
alluvium has still means of his own for quickening the 
vital energy of the most complex organisms. That 
tonic catholicon operates even through the triple teg- 
uments of a French uniform. After the tedium of a 
long voyage, and the delay in the Vera Cruz harbor- 
barracks, the French troops in Mexico suffered from 
a form of asthma that resisted all medication, but a six 
day's march through the hills of the tierra templada 
brought permanent relief, except to a few invalids 
who had been transported in closed ambulances. At 
first, though, the remedy is apt to aggravate the evil. 
After a couple of sleepless nights,the first day of a 
pedestrian tour, even through the paradise of a 
June landscape, is steep, uphill work, but, with the 
aid of a merry traveling-companion and a light knap- 
sack, Nature will at last prevail, and three days' 
hardship is a cheap price for the remission of a three 
weeks' daily and nightly martyrdom — besides the pos- 
sible sequelae. For the chief danger of chronic asthma 



120 HOUSEHOLD REMEDIES. 

is the probability of serious pathological complica- 
tions. The direct result of dyspnoea is the impoverish- 
ment of the blood by impeded process of aeration, and 
the concomitants of the disease are therefore analo- 
gous to those of pulmonary phthisis and protracted in 
door life — hypertrophy of the heart, emphysema, or 
swelling of the lungs, inflammation of the bronchi, 
dropsical swellings of the extremities. Even short 
attacks often lead to malignant after-effects — insomnia, 
indigestion, headache, and a pecular affection of the 
lungs that closely simulates the premonitory symp- 
toms of pneumonia ; after the asthma proper has en- 
tirely subsided, a new difficulty, of breathing super- 
venes in the form of twitching pains in the pleura and 
the upper lobes of the lungs. Before the end of the 
second day, rest, embrocations with hot mutton-tallow, 
and a spare diet generally relieve these symptoms, 
which follow more frequently after a drug-suppressed 
case of asthma than after the pedestrian-cure. The 
latter method of treatment is intuitively indicated by 
the restlessness of asthma-patients. The same hygienic 
instinct which makes a passionate longing for refrig- 
eration a regular symptom of climatic fevers seems 
here to prompt peripatetic enterprises by associating 
in-door life with the idea of apoplexy and suffocation. 
Like consumption, asthma is a house-diease. 
"Want of fresh air and exercise will counteract all pro- 
phylactics, while the out-door liver can confine his 
precautions to the beginning of the warm season. 
A frugal diet, both as an hygienic aperient and a 
sedative of irate passions, will help the patient over 
the asthma-weeks (May and June in the north, and 



ASTHMA. 121 

April and May in the lower latitudes) ; an airy bed- 
room and cold baths, over the summer season. The 
winter months will take care of themselves and every 
year thus passed diminishes the danger of relapse. 



CHAPTER V. 



THE ALCOHOL HABIT. 

In the tragedy of errors, called the history of the 
human race, ignorance has often done as much mis- 
chief as sin; and the erroneous theories of the cause 
— and, consequently, the proper cure — of the JPozson- 
Vice have caused nearly as much misery as that vice 
itself. They have made intemperance an all but in- 
curable evil ; they have helped to originate the dogma 
of natural depravity, the confidence in the efficacy of 
anti-natural remedies, and that baneful mistrust in 
the competence of our natural instincts that still viti- 
ates our whole system of physical education. 

Physiology is a true thaumaturgic science — a de- 
scription of wonders. The veriest savage must dimly 
recognize the fact that man cannot measure his cun- 
ning against the wdsdom of the Creator, and, if the 
development of science should continue at the present 
rate of progress for a thousand generations, the ac- 
cumulated knowledge of all those ages would convince 
its inheritors that a blade of grass is a greater marvel 
(122) 



THE ALCOHOL HABIT. 123 

than all the products of human skill. No human 
artificer can imitate the mechanism of a motor- 
nerve; the structural devices which the microscope 
reveals in the tissue of the meanest moss are perfect 
hyperboles of wisdom and plastic skill. But the 
greatest miracles of that wisdom manifest themselves 
in the self -protecting contrivances of a living organism. 

Our nervous system performs its functions by a 
combination of alarm signals that apprise us of an 
infinite variety of external dangers and internal needs, 
in a language that has a distinct expression for every 
want of our alimentary and respiratory organs, for 
every distress of our tissues, sinews, and muscles, for 
every needed reaction against the influence of ab- 
normal circumstances ; our skin protests against 
every injurious degree of heat and cold, our lungs 
against atmospheric impurities, our eyes against the 
intrusion of the smallest insect ; the human body is a 
house that cleanses its own chambers and heats its 
own stoves, opens and shuts its windows at proper 
intervals, expels mischievous intruders, and promptly 
informs its tenant of every external peril and internal 
disorder. 

How, then, can it be explained that the wonderful 
architect of that living house has provided no better 
safeguard against such a dreadful danger as the alco- 
hol-habit ? Millions of our fellow-men complain that 
they owe their temporal and eternal ruin to the prompt- 
ings of an irresistible appetite — as if Nature herself 
had lured them to their destruction. Temperance- 
preachers descant on the " danger of worldly temp- 
tations " and " selfish indulgence, " on the "lusts of 



124 HOUSEHOLD REMEDIES. 

unregenerate hearts. " Drunkards plead their will- 
ingness to reform, but " the flesh is stronger than the 
I spirit, " the clamors of instinct silence the voice of 
every other monitor. Does the power of such appe- 
tites not suggest the occasional incompetence of our 
natural intuitions ? Does it not seem to confirm the 
dogma of natural depravity, and prove an essential 
defect in the constitution of our physical conscience ? 
Nay, in the light of Nature, for reason too often fails 
to supply the shortcomings of instinct ; the teachers 
whom the ignorant must follow seem themselves to 
be in need of a guide ; the stimulant-vice has found 
learned and plausible defenders ; zealous priests of 
Moloch have worshiped the man-devouring fire as a 
sacred flame ; for thousands of honest truth-seekers 
the disagreement of doctors makes it doubtful if al- 
cohol is a friend or a foe, a health-giving tonic or a 
death-dealing poison. 

Does all this not prove that, in one most important 
respect, Nature has failed to insure the welfare of her 
creatures ? 

What it really proves is this: That habitual sin has 
blunted our physical conscience till we have not only 
ceased to heed, but ceased to understand, the protests 
of our inner monitor ; it proves that the victims of 
vice have so utterly forgotten the language of their 
instincts that they are no longer able to distinguish 
a natural appetite from a morbid appetency. 

For the Creator has not intrusted our physical wel- 
fare to accident or the tardy aid of science, and, in 
spite of the far-gone degeneration of our race, our chil- 
dren still share nearly all the protective instincts of the 



THE ALCOHOL HABIT. 125 

Nature-guided ammals. Children abhor the vitiated 
air of our city tenements ; they need no lecturer on 
practical physiology to impress the necessity of out- 
door exercise ; their instinct revolts against the ab- 
surdities of fashion and the unnatural restraints of our 
sedentary modes of life. And the same inner monitor 
warns them against dietetic abuses. Long before 
Bichat proved that our digestive organs are those of 
a frugivorous animal, children preferred apples to 
sausages and sweetmeats to greasy-made dishes ; they 
detest rancid cheese, caustic spices, and similar whets 
of our jaded appetites. No human being ever relished 
the first taste of a " stimulant." To the palate of a 
healthy child, tea is insipid ; the taste of coffee (unless 
disguised by milk or sugar) offensively bitter, lauda- 
num acrid-caustic ; alcohol as repulsive as corrosive 
sublimate. No tobacco-smoker ever forgets his hor- 
ror at the first attempt, the seasick-like misery and 
headache — Nature's protest against the incipience of 
• a health-destroying habit. Of lager-beer — "the grate- 
ful and nutritive beverage which our brewers are 
now prepared to furnish at the rate of 480,000 gallons 
a day " — the first glass is shockingly nauseous — so 
much so, indeed, as to be a fluid substitute for tartar 
emetic. Nor do our instincts yield after the first pro- 
test : nausea, gripes, nervous headaches, and gastric 
spasms, warn us again and again. But we repeat the 
dose, and Nature, true to her highest law of preserv- 
ing existence at any price, and feeling the hopeless- 
ness of the life-endangering struggle, finally chooses 
the alternative of palliating an evil for which she has 
no remedy, and adapts herself to the abnormal con- 



126 HOUSEHOLD REMEDIES. 

dition. The human body becomes a poison-engine, 
an alcohol-machine, performing its vital functions 
only under the spur of a specific stimulus. 

And only then the unnatural habit begets that crav- 
ing which the toper mistakes for the prompting of a 
healthy appetite — a craving which every gratification 
makes more exorbitant. For by-and-by the jaded 
system fails to respond to the spur : the poison-slave 
has to resort to stronger stimulants ; rum and medi- 
cated brandy now mock him with the hope of revived 
strength ; the gathering night still gives way to an 
occasional flickering-up of the vital flame, till the 
nervous exhaustion at last defies every remedy : the 
worshipper of alcohol must consummate his self-sacri- 
fice, the shadow of his doom has settled on his soul, 
and all the strongest stimulants can now do for him is 
to recall a momentary glimmering of that light which 
filled the unclouded heaven of his childhood. 

In order to distinguish a poison-stimulant from a 
harmless and nutritive substance, Nature has thus 
furnished us three infallible tests : 

1. The first taste of every poison is either insipid or 
repulsive. 

2. The persistent obtrusion of the noxious substance 
changes that aversion into a specific craving. 

3. The more or less pleasurable excitement produced 
by a gratification of that craving is always followed by 
a depressing reaction. 

The first drop of a wholesome beverage (milk, cold 
water, cider fresh from the press, etc.) is quite as 
pleasant as the last : the indulgence in such pleasures 
is not followed by repentance, and never begets a 



THE ALCOHOL HABIT. V27 

specific craning. Pancakes and honey we may eat 
with great relish whenever we can get them, but, if 
we can't, we won't miss them as long as we can sat- 
isfy our hunger with bread and butter. In midwinter 
when apples advance to six dollars a barrel, it needs 
no lectures and midnight prayers to substitute rice- 
pudding for apple-pie. A Turk may breakfast for 
thirty years on figs and roasted chestnuts, and yet be 
quite as comfortable in Switzerland, where they treat 
him to milk and bread. Not so the dram-drinker : 
his " thirst " cannot be assuaged with water or milk, 
his enslaved appetite craves the wonted tipple — or 
else a stronger stimulant. Natural food has no effect 
on the poison-hunger ; Nature has nothing to do with 
such appetites. 

The first choice of any particular stimulant seems 
to depend on such altogether accidental circumstances 
as the accessibility or cheapness of this or that 
special medium of intoxication. Orchard countries 
use distilled or vinous tipples ; grain-lands waste 
their products on malt-liquors. The pastoral Tur- 
komans fuddle with koumiss, or fermented mare's- 
milk, the Ashantees with sorgho-beer, the Mexicans 
with pulque (aloe-sap), the Chinese and Persians 
with opium and hasheesh (Can?iabisl?idica) 9 the Peru- 
vians with the acrid leaves of the cocoa-tree. Even 
mineral poisons have their votaries. There are thou- 
sands of arsensic-eaters in the southern Alps. Ar- 
senious acid, antimony, cinnabar, and acetate of cop- 
per, are mistaken for digestive tonics by Spanish and 
South American miners. By the process of fermenta- 
tion, rice, sago, honey, sugar, durrha {Sorghum VuJ- 



128 HOUSEHOLD REMEDIES. 

garis), dates, plums, currants, and innumerable other 
berries and fruits, have been converted into stimu- 
lants. The pastor of a Swiss colony on the Llanos 
Ventosos in the Mexican State of Oaxaca told me 
that the Indians of that neighborhood stupefy them- 
selves with macerated cicuta, a kind of water-hemlock, 
and remarked that the delirium and the subsequent 
reaction of a cicuta-debauch correspond exactly to 
the successive phases of a whiskey-spree, the only 
difference being in the price of the tipple. If intoxi- 
cation were a physiological necessity, it would, in- 
deed, be folly to buy the stimulant at the dram-shops, 
since cheaper poisons would serve the same purpose. 
A dime's worth of arsenic would protract the stimu- 
lant-fever for a week, with all the alternate excite- 
ments and dejections of an alcohol-revel. A man 
might get used to phosphorus and inflame his liver 
with the same lucifer-matches he uses to light his 
lamp ; we might gather jimson-w r eed or aconite, or 
fuddle with mushrooms, like the natives of Kam- 
chatka, who prepare a highly-intoxicating liquor 
from a decoction of the common fly-toadstool (Agari- 
cus maculaius). 

These facts teach us two other valueable lessons, 
viz., that every poison can become a stimulant, and that 
the alcohol-habit is characterized by all the symptoms 
which distinguish the poison-hunger from a natural ap- 
petite. One radical fallacy identifies the stimulant- 
habit in all its disguises ; its victims mistake a process 
of irritation for a process of invigoration. The self- 
deception of the dyspeptic philosopher, who hopes 
to exorcise his blue-devils with the fumes of the weed 



THE ALCOHOL HABIT. 129 

that has caused his sick-headaches is absolutely an- 
alogous to that of the pot-house sot who tries to 
drown his care in the source of all his sorrows ; and 
there is no reason to doubt that it is precisely the 
same fallacy which formerly ascribed remedial virtues 
to the vilest stimulants of the drug-store, and that, 
with few exceptions, the poisons administered for 
"medicinal" purposes have considerably increased, 
instead of decreasing, the sum of human misery. 

The milder stimulants (light beer, cider, and nar- 
cotic infusions) would be comparatively harmless, if 
their votaries could confine themselves to moderate 
dosis For sooner or later the tonic is sure to pall 
while the morbid craving remains, and forces its vic- 
tim either to increase the quantity of the wonted stim- 
ulant, or else resort to a stronger poison. A boy 
begins with ginger-beer and ends with ginger-rum ; 
the medical "tonic" delusion progresses from malt- 
extract to Munford's Elixir ; the coffee-cup leads to 
the pipe, and the pipe to the pot-house. Wherever 
the nicotine-habit has been introduced, the alcohol- 
habit soon follows. The Spanish Saracens abstained 
from all poisons, and for seven centuries remained 
the teachers of Europe in war as well as in science 
and the arts of peace — freemen in the fullest sense 
of the word, men whom a powerful foe could at last 
expel and exterminate, but never subdue. The Turks, 
having learned to smoke tobacco, soon learned to eat 
opium, and have since been taught to eat dust at the 
feet of the Muscovite. When the first Spaniards 
came to South America they found in the Patagonian 
highlands a tribe of warlike natives who were entire- 



130 HOUSEHOLD REMEDIES, 

ly ignorant of any stimulating substance, and who 
have ever since defied the sutlers and soldiers of 
their neighbors, while the tobacco-smoking red-skins 
of the North succumbed to fire-water. In the South 
Sea Islands, too, European poisons have done more 
mischief than gunpowder : wherever the natives had 
been fond of fermented cocoa-milk, their children be- 
came still fonder of rum ; while the Papuans, whose 
forefathers had never practiced stimulation, have al- 
ways shown an aversion to drunkenness, and in spite 
of their ethnological inferiority have managed to 
survive their aboriginal neighbors. International 
statistics have revealed the remarkable fact that the 
alcohol- vice is most prevalent — not in the most ig- 
norant or most despotic countries (Russia, Austria, 
and Turkey), nor where alcoholic drinks of the most 
seductive kind are cheapest (Greece, Spain, and Asia 
Minor), but in the commercial countries that use the 
greatest variety of milder stimulants — Great Britain, 
Western France, and Eastern North America. Hence 
the apparent paradox that drunkenness is most fre- 
quent among the most civilized nations. The ten- 
dency of every stimulant-habit is toward a stronger 
tonic. Claude Bernard, the famous French physiolo- 
gist, noticed that the opium-vice recruits its female 
victims chiefly from the ranks of the veteran coffee- 
drinkers ; in Savoy and the adjoining Swiss cantons 
kirsch-wasser prepares the way for arsenic ; in Lon- 
don and St. Petersburg many ether-drinkers have 
relinquished high wines for a more concentrated poi- 
son, and in Constantinople the Persian opium-shops 



THE ALCOHOL HABIT. 131 

have eclipsed the popularity of the Arabian coffee- 
houses. 

We see, then, that every poison-habit is progressive, 
and thus realize the truth that there is no such thing 
as a harmless stimulant, because the incipience of 
every unnatural appetite is the first stage of a pro- 
gressive disease. 

The facts from which we draw these conclusions 
have long been familiar to scientific specialists, and 
have separately been commented upon ; but in 
science, as in morals, the progress from special to 
general inferences is often amazingly slow. The 
ancient Athenians would have shuddered at the 
idea of selling and buying a burgher of their 
own city, but had no hesitation to enslave the 
Greeks of the neighboring States. The Eomans 
enfranchised the citizens of Latium, and at last 
all the natives of the Italian Peninsula, but kidnapped 
all the " barbarians they could lay their hands upon ! 
The French and Spaniards of the last century were 
deeply shocked at the indiscriminate man-hunts of 
the Algerian corsairs, and even refused to retaliate on 
the men of Argel, because, in spite of their black tur- 
pitude many of those misbelievers had something like 
a Caucasian skin on their faces, but those same mor- 
alists thought it perfectly proper to kidnap and cow- 
hide the black sons of Ham ; but, since the children 
of a negress were as salable as their mothers, and 
miscegenation and mistakes could not always be 
avoided, it sometimes happened that the auctioneer 
got hold of a white slave, till William Wilberforce at 
last arrived at the grand conclusion that all human 



132 HOUSEHOLD REMEDIES. 

slavery is wrong. More than a hundred years ago, 
Dr. Boerhaaye entered an emphatic protest against 
rum, French high-wines, and " other adulterated spir- 
its," but confessed a predilection for a drop of good 
Schiedam, Dr. Zimmermann objected to all distilled 
liquors, but recommended a glass of good wine, and 
a plate of beer-soup — the latter a Prussian invention, 
and one of those outrages on human nature that em- 
bittered the childhood of Frederick the Great. The 
hygienic reformers of our own country denounce in- 
toxicating drinks of all kinds, but connive at mild ale, 
cider, opiates, narcotics, and patent " bitters." The 
plan has been thoroughly tried, and has thoroughly 
failed. We have found that the road to the rum-shop 
is paved with "mild stimulants," and that every bottle 
of medical bitters is apt to get the vender a perma- 
nent customer. We have found that cider and mild 
ale lead to strong ale, to lager-beer, and finally to 
rum, and the truth at last dawns upon us that the only 
safe, consistent, and effective plan is Total Abstinence 
from all Poisons. 

We have seen that the poison-habit is a upas-tree 
that reproduces its germs from the smallest seeds ; 
but where did the first seed come from ? How did 
the life-blinding delusion happen to take root in the 
human mind? "Man is the only suicidal animal," 
says Dr. Haller, "and the first opium-eater was prob- 
ably some life-weary wretch who tried to end his 
misery by a lethal dose, and found that his poison 
could be used as a temporary nepenthe." The phys- 
iologist Camper ascribes the introduction of alcoholic 
liquors to the experiments of unprincipled physicans ; 



THE ALCOHOL HABIT. 133 

but the most plausible theory is the conjecture of 
Fabia Colonna, an Italian scientist of the seventeenth 
century. "Before people used wine," says he, "they 
: probably drank sweet must, and preserved it, like oil, 
in jars or skins. But in a warm climate a saccharine 
fluid is apt to ferment, and some avaricious house- 
keeper may have drunk that spoiled stuff till she be- 
came fond of it, and thus learned to prefer wine to 
must." Not a compliment to human nature, but quite 
probable enough to be true. An animal would have 
preferred water to spoiled grape-juice, but even at 
a very early period of his development the Nature- 
despising homo sapiens may have learned to disregard 
the warnings of his instinct. The economical house- 
keeper probably thought it a shame that his (giving 
poor Eve the benefit of the doubt) servants should 
grumble about a slight difference in the taste of the 
must, and the servants had to submit, had to drink 
the " spoiled stuff" again and again, till habit more 
than neutralized their disgust, for they found that the 
sickness induced by the effects of the putrefaction- 
poison (alcohol) could be cured by a repetition of the 
dose. They began to hanker after fermented must, 
and, by drinking it in larger quantities, induced a 
delirium which they described as anything but un- 
pleasant ; and their master, after repeated experi- 
ments, probably arrived at the same conclusion, 
namely, that must could be improved by fermenta- 
tion. The next year they gathered grapes for the de- 
liberate purpose of manufacturing an intoxicating 
drink, and the fatal precedent was established. Na- 
ture exacted the just penalties : the votaries of the 



134 HOUSEHOLD REMEDIES. 

poison-god were stricken witli physical and mental 
nausea — weariness, headaches, fits of spleen and 
hypochondria — bub still they found that all these 
symptoms could be temporarily relieved by a draught 
of fermented must ; and the neighbors were aston- 
ished to learn that the servants of Goodman Noah 
had discovered a panacea for all earthly afflictions. 
They, too, then tried the recipe — with indifferent 
success at first, but the experience of the habitues en- 
couraged them to persist, till the manufacture of 
wine became an extensive business. 

The first traffickers in stimulants (like our lager- 
beer philanthropists) had a personal interest in dis- 
seminating the habit, but, whatever may have been 
the birth-land of the alcohol-vice, its first growth 
was probably slow, compared with the rate of increase 
after its exportation across the frontier. The history 
of tobacco, tea, coffee (and opium, I fear), has re- 
peatedly illustrated the influence of imitativeness in 
promoting the introduction of foreign vices. The 
rarity and novelty of outlandish articles generally 
disposes the vulgar to value them as luxuries, espe- 
cially while a high price precludes their general use. 
Foreign merchants and a few wealthy natives set the 
fashion, and soon the lower classes vie in emulating 
their betters, the young in aping their elders. In 
England, James I. tried his utmost to suppress the 
use of smoking-tobacco, but, after his young cavaliers 
had become addicted to the habit, no penalties 
could prevent the London apprentices from imitating 
them. "In large cities," says Dr. Schrodt, "one may 
see gamins under ten years grubbing in rubbish- 



THE ALCOHOL HABIT. 185 

heaps for cigar-stumps, soon after leaning against a 
board-fence, groaning and shuddering as they pay 
the repeated penalty of Nature, but, all the same, re- 
suming the experiment with the resignation of a 
martyr. The rich, the fashionable, do it ; those whom '' 
they; envy smoke : smoking, they conclude, must be 
something enviable." 

Similar arguments, doubtless, aided the introduction 
of the alcohol-habit, and, after the vice had once 
taken root, its epidemic development followed as 
a matter of course. Every poison-vice is progressive, 
and, soon after the introduction of a new stimulant, 
the majority of individual consumers will find that 
the habit "grows upon them," as our language aptly 
expresses it. The direct effect of the poison, heredi- 
tary influences, etc., induce a growing depression of 
vital energy, which, in turn, leads to an increased de- 
mand for the means of stimulation. This want is met 
in a twofold way : 1. By a direct increase of the 
quantity or strength of an special stimulant ; 2. By 
the progress from a milder to a more virulent poison 
of a different kind. 

In Prussia, Scotland, Denmark (as well as in some 
of our Eastern States), actual drunkenness (i. e., in- 
toxication followed by riotous conduct) has appar- 
ently decreased, while the revenue register shows an 
undoubted increase in the per capita consumption of 
alcoholic liquors. This does not prove that our 
topers are growing less vicious, but that they are 
growing more practical ; intermittent rioters have be- 
come "steady hard-drinkers." In the Calmuck steppes y 
whose barrenness has forced the inhabitants to pre- 



136 HOUSEHOLD BEMEDIES. 

serve the primitive habits of their ancestors, a little 
grain is cultivated here and there in the river-valleys, 
and during the winter migration the herders carry 
bags full of rye from camp to camp, and bake bread 
whenever they are short of meat or milk. But at the 
return of the harvest season they have both meat and 
bread, and utilize the surplus of last year's grain 
by brewing it into a sort of beer, and indulging in a 
grand carousal — i. e., they get beastly drunk, but only 
once a year. The Bacchanalia and Symposia of the 
ancient Greeks were monthly revels in honor of some 
favorite diety ; and even during the middle ages 
many of the poor Scotch lairds brewed ale only 
when they expected a guest. To get "as drunk as a 
lord" w r as the highest ambition of poor Hodge, but 
an ambition which he could not often gratify, though 
he sometimes stinted himself in order to drink his 
fill— 

u At ember-eves and holy ales." 

By-and-by, however, wages improved, and ales be- 
came more frequent and more decidedly unholy, 
though perhaps less obstreperous, since continual 
* practice enables our topers to "carry their liquor" as 
discreetly as the Baron of Bardwardine. The most 
respectable hotel in Geneva, Switzerland, allows its 
male employes a daily pour boire of six quarts of wine ; 
Dr. Buchanan, of Manchester, speaks of English 
mechanics of the "better class" who take a glass of 
gin with every meal ; and I am sure of understanding 
the truth if I say that in the larger cities of Germany 
and North America every popular beer-shop has 
among its customers dozens of "regulars" who drink 



THE ALCOHOL HABIT. 137 

the year round a daily minimum of two gallons of 
lager-beer. The poison-mania which attacked our 
ancestors in the form of an intermittent passion has 
grown into an insatiable hunger ; the tempting ser- 
pent has become a strangling hydra. 

And the heads of that hydra have multiplied. The 
ancient Greeks knew only one stimulant — wine ; the 
Northmen beer, the American Indians tobacco. "We 
have adopted all three, besides tea from China, opium 
from India, coffee from Arabia, and fire-water from the 
laboratory of the German chemists. To this list the 
modern French have added chloral and absinthe. 
Yet this multiformity of the poison-habit is nothing 
but a normal symptom of its growth ; whenever the 
quantitative increase of a stimulant-dose has reached 
its physical limits, the exhausted system craves a new 
tonic ; the beer-drinker rallies his nerves wdth strong 
coffee, tobacco, or hot spices (pepper-sauce, "herring- 
salad," etc.), the brandy-drinker with chloral or 
opium, the opium-eater with arsenic. "It is alcohol 
that has led me to opium," says Charles Msard ; "at 
first I used laudanum only as an antidote." 

Antidote means counter-poison. Supplementary 
poison would have been the right word ; foreign 
poison-habits have supplemented rather than super- 
seded our old stimulant-vices. The brewers' ar- 
gument, that the use of lager-beer would prevent the 
introduction of opium, is, therefore, a bottomless 
sophism : no stimulant has ever prevented the dis- 
semination of other and stronger poisons. The alco- 
hol-habit has sometimes been supplanted by a pas- 
sion for opium, chloral, or arsenic, but it cannot be 



138 HOUSEHOLD REMEDIES. 

exorcised with a weaker stimulant. Beelzebub does 
not yield to a liobgoblin. Yet nothing is more com- 
mon in temperance-hospitals than to comfort a con- 
verted drunkard with strong black coffee or stimulat- 
ing drugs, in the hope that the milder tonic might 
operate as a sort of antidote and neutralize the after- 
effects of the stronger poison. That idea is an un- 
fortunate delusion. The siiccedaneum may bring a 
temporary relief, but it cannot assuage the thirst for 
a stronger tonic, and only serves to perpetuate the 
stimulant-diathesis — it prepares the way for the re- 
turn of Beelzebub with a legion of accomplices. On 
the total-abstinence plan the struggle with the fiend 
is sharper, but decisive. If, by the help of a strong 
physical (or moral) constitution, the drunkard can 
suppress his appetite for a year, he may manage to 
keep it afterward in a dormant condition ; but only 
with extreme precaution, for a mere spark is apt to 
rekindle the flame. 

"It should ever be borne in mind, " says Dr. Sewell, 
"that such is the sensibility of the stomach of the 
reformed drunkard, that a repetition of the use of 
alcohol, in the slightest degree and in any form, 
under any circumstances, revives the appetite ; the 
blood-vessels of the stomach again become dilated, 
and the morbid sensibility of the organ is repro- 
duced. " 

A young priest from one of the "West India Islands 
once consulted Dr. Bush for an affection of the lungs, 
and was advised to try the use of garlics. "I am 
satisfied that your prescription is doing me good, " 
said he at the next interview, " but I wish you would 



THE ALCOHOL HABIT. 139 

let me steep it in some good old Geneva." "No, in- 
deed, sir! " said the docter, with emphasis ; "no man 
shall look me in the face, on the day of judgment, and 
tell the Almighty that Dr. Rush made him a drunk- 
ard !" 

I do not intend to deny that the use of mild alcoholic 
tonics, as a substitute for frightful remedies of the 
mediaeval Sangrados, is a decided improvement, but, 
still, it is only a lesser evil, a first step of a progres- 
sive reform. Alcohol lingers in hospitals as slavery 
lingers in the West Indies, as the withcraft delusion 
lingers in Southern Europe. Has alcohol any reme- 
dial value whatever ? Let us consider the matter from 
a purely empirical stand-point. Does alcohol protect 
from malarial fevers ? It is a well-known fact that the 
human organism cannot support Wo diseases at the 
same time. Rheumatism can be temporarily relieved 
by producing an artificial inflammation ; a headache 
yields to a severe toothache. For the same reason 
the alcohol-fever affords a temporary protection from 
other febrile symptoms — i. e., a man might fortify his 
system against chills and ague by keeping himself 
constantly under stimulating influence of alcohol. 
But sooner or later stimulation is followed by de- 
pression, and during that reaction the other fever 
gets a chance, and rarely misses it. The history of 
epidemics proves that pyretic diseases are from eight 
to twelve times more destructive among dram-drinkers 
than among the temperate classes; rich or poor, 
young or old, abstainers are only centesimated by 
diseases that dicimate drunkards. On no other point 



140 HOUSEHOLD REMEDIES. 

is the testimony of physicians of all schools, all times 
and all countries, more consistent and unanimous. 

Is alcohol a peptic stimulant ? No more than Glau- 
ber's-salt or castor-oil. The system hastens to rid 
itself of the noxious substance, the bowels are thrown 
into a state of morbid activity. The effect of every 
laxative is followed by a stringent reaction, and the 
habitual use of peptic stimulants leads to a chronic 
constipation which yields only to purgatives of the 
most virulent kind. 

Does alcohol impart strength ? Does it benefit the 
exhausted system ? If a worn-out horse drops on 
the highway, we can rouse it by sticking a knife into 
its ribs, but, after staggering ahead for a couple of 
minutes, it will drop again, and the second deliquium 
will be worse than the first by just as much as the 
brutal stimulus has still further exhausted the little 
remaining strength. In the same way precisely alco- 
hol rallies the exhausted energies of the human body. 
The prostrate vitality rises against the foe, and la- 
bors with restless energy till the poison is expelled. 
Then comes the reaction, and, before the patient can 
recover, his organism has to do double work. Nature 
has to overcome both the original cause of the dis- 
ease and the effect of the stimulant. 

Alcohol has no remedial value. But that would be 
a trifle, if it were not for the positive mischief which 
the wretched poison is liable, and very liable, to cause. 
Four repetitions of the stimulant-dose may inoculate 
a child with the germs of the alcohol-diathesis and 
initiate a habit which years of anguish and despair 
will fail to cure. By a single glass of medicated 



THE ALCOHOL HABIT. 141 

brandy thousands of convalescing topers have lost 
their hard-earned chance of recovery ; poor, strug- 
gling wretches, swimming for their lives, and, at last, 
approaching a saving shore, have been pushed back 
into the surging whirlpool, and perished almost in 
sight of the harbor ! The only chance of curing the 
poison-habit consists in the hope of guarding its vic- 
tims against all stimulants ; and I would as soon 
snatch bread from a starving man as that last hope 
from a drunkard. 

Abstinence is easier, as well as safer, than temper- 
ance. " In freeing themselves from the bonds of an 
unworthy attachment," says Madame de Sevigne, 
" men have one great advantage — they can travel." 
If young Lochinvar's suit had been hopeless, the fur- 
tive interview with his lost love might have soothed 
his sorrow for a moment, but for his ultimate peace 
of mind it would have been better to stay in the 
west. The anchorites of old knew well why they 
preferred the wilderness to the humblest village ; 
they found it easier to avoid all temptations. Yices 
as well as virtues, are co-operative. 

In the cure of the alcohol-habit, the total renun- 
ciation of all stimulants is therefore, the first and 
most essential measure. A change of diet, a change 
of climate, of employment, and general habits, will 
help to shorten the distressing reaction that must pre- 
cede the re-establishment of perfect health. The 
force of example may partly supply a deficiency in 
moral principles, ambition may strengthen their in- 
fluence. But the effect of any secondary stimulant 
is more than enough to counteract such tendencies. 



142 HOUSEHOLD REMEDIES. 

With the following precautions the total-abstinence 
plan will prove to have the further advantage of pro- 
gressive effectiveness; for, after the removal of the 
irritating cause has in some degree allayed the mor- 
bid sensitiveness of the digestive organs, the abnor- 
mal appetite will gradually disappear, like the secon- 
dary symptoms of the disease, and thus lessen the in- 
fluence of the subjective temptation. 



CHAPTEE VI. 



THE ALCOHOL HABIT — CONTINUED. 

But, in tracing the causes which led to the present 
development of the poison-vice, we should not over- 
look the working of another principle which I must 
call a reaction against the effort of a wrong remedy. 
We cannot serve our cause by ignoring its weak 
points, for if we persist in closing our eyes to the sig- 
nificance of our mistakes, our enemies will not fail to 
profit by our blindness. We cannot work in the dark. 
In order to reach our goal, we must see our way 
clear ; and I trust that no earnest fellow-laborer will 
misconstrue my motive if I dare to say the whole 
truth. 

The matter is this : At a time when the civilization 
of antiquity had become extremely corrupt, a society 
of ethical reformers tried to find the panacea for vice, 
as we now seek the remedy for intemperance. But, 
instead of recognizing the local causes of the evil, 
they ascribed it to the general perversity of the hu- 
man heart. They, too, failed to distinguish between 
(143) ' 



144 HOUSEHOLD REMEDIES. 

natural appetites and morbid appetencies, and, mis- 
led by the glaring consequences of perverted pas- 
sions, they conceived the unhappy idea that man's 
natural instincts are his natural enemies. In order 
to crush a few baneful nightshades and poppy-blos- 
soms, they began a war of extermination against 
the flowers of this earth. But that attempt led to an 
unexpected result : the soil of the trampled fields en- 
gendered weeds that were far harder to destroy than 
the noxious herbs of the old flower-garden. The 
would-be reformers had overlooked the fact that it 
is easier to pervert than to suppress a natural instinct ; 
but the history of the last twelve hundred years has 
illustrated that truth by many dreadful examples. 
The suppression of rational freedom led to anarchy. 
Celib^acy became the mother of the ugliest vices. 
The attempt to suppress the pursuit of natural science 
led to the pursuit of pseudo-science — astrology, ne- 
cromancy, and all sorts of dire chimeras. The sup- 
pression of harmless pleasures has always fostered 
the penchant for vicious pleasures. The austerity of 
the Stoics helped to propagate the doctrines of Epi- 
curus ; in Islam the era of the Hambalite ascetics was 
followed by the riots of the Bagdad caliphate ; and 
the open licentiousness of the English anti-Puritans, 
as well as the secret excesses of their northern neigh- 
bors, can be distinctly traced to the mistaken zeal of the 
party which had waged a long and unrelenting war 
against every form of physical pleasure, and hoped to 
find salvation in the suppression of all natural desires. 
That doctrine has never become the permanent faith 
of any Aryan nation, though now and then it has 



THE ALCOHOL HABIT. 145 

reached a local ascendency which made it a grievous 
addition to the evils it proposed to cure. More than 
fifteen hundred years ago the Emperor Julian, and 
even St. Clemens Alexandrinus, denounced the ab- 
surdities of the Marcionite Gnostics, who "abstained 
from marriage, the pursuit of worldly advantages, 
and all temporal pleasures " The original rigor of 
those dogmas could not maintain itself against the 
healthier instincts of mankind ; but what they lost in 
consistency they made up in aggressiveness : an in- 
fluential sect of the last century attempted to enforce 
upon others what the Marcionities practiced in pri- 
vate, and, while the Syrian ascetics preferred the des- 
ert to the world, the Scotch ascetics tried to turn the 
world into a desert. 

"According to that code," says the author of the 
" History of Civilization," "all the natural affections, 
all social pleasures, all amusements, and all the joy- 
ous instincts of the human heart, were sinful. They 
looked on all comforts as wicked in themselves, mere- 
ly because they were comforts. The great object in 
life was to be in a state of constant affliction ; . . . 
whatever pleased the senses was to be suspected. It 
mattered not what a man liked ; the mere fact of his 
liking it made it sinful. Whatever was natural was 
wrong. It was wrong to take pleasure in beautiful 
scenery, for a pious man had no concern with such 
matters. On Sunday it was sinful to walk in the fields 
or in meadows, or enjoy fair weather by sitting at the 
door of your own house." 

"Whatever was natural was wrong " — though even 
the extremists of that school mi°*ht have shrunk from 



146 HOUSEHOLD EEMEDIES. 

the consistency of their Syrian exemplar, who for- 
bade his anchorites to sleep twice under the same 
tree, lest their spiritual interests should be imperilled 
by an undue affection for any earthly object ! 

If it were possible that such dogmas could ever 
again overpower the common sense of mankind, we 
should welcome the poison-mania as the lesser evil, 
for it is better to seek happiness by a wrong road than 
to abandon the search altogether. It is better to 
taste a forbidden fruit than to destroy all pleasant 
trees. But it is impossible that such chimeras should 
have survived their native night. After the terrible 
experience of the middle ages, it is impossible that 
any sane person should fail to recognize the signifi- 
cance of the mistake, and we cannot hope to maintain 
the field against the opponents of temperance till we 
have deprived them of their most effective weapon : 
we must furnish practical proofs that they, not we, 
are the enemies of human happiness ; that we make 
war upon vice, and not upon harmless pleasures. 

It is a significant fact that in every civilized coun- 
try of this earth drunkenness is rarest among the 
classes who have other and better convivial resources. 
In the United States, where the "almighty dollar" 
confers unlimited privileges, the well-to-do people are 
the most temperate in the world, the poor the most 
intemperate. In Turkey, where the lower classes are 
indulged in many pastimes which are considered be- 
low the dignity of an effendi, the poison-vice is ac- 
tually confined to the upper ten : temperance reigns 
in the cottage, while opium-smoking and secret dram- 
drinking prevail in the palace. In Scotland, where 



THE ALCOHOL HABIT. 147 

all classes have to conform to the moral by-laws 
which discountenance holidy recreations, total ab- 
stinence is extremely rare. For — "Nature will have 
her revenge, and, when the most ordinary and harm- 
less recreations are forbidden as sinful, is apt to seek 
compensation in indulgences which no moralist would 
be willing to condone. The charge brought against 
the Novatians in the early ages of the Church can, 
with equal plausibility, be brought against the 
Puritans in our own day. One vice, at all events, 
which Christians of every school, as well as non- 
Christian moralists, are agreed in condemning, is re- 
puted to be a special opprobrium of Scotland ; and 
the strictest observance of all those minute and op- 
pressive Sabbatarian regulations to which we re- 
ferred just now has been found compatible with con- 
secrating the day of rest to a quiet but unlimited as- 
similation of the liquid which inebriates but does not 
cheer. And under the old regime to be drunk in pri- 
vate, though of course not sanctioned as allowable, 
would have been accounted a far less heinous outrage 
on the dignity of the Sabbath than to whistle in the 
public street." — (The "Saturday Review," July 19, 
1879, p. 75.) 

There is, indeed, no doubt that the "snuffling, 
whining saints, who groaned in spirit at the sight of 
Jack in the Green," * have driven as many pleasure- 
seekers from the play-ground to the pot-house as des- 
potism has turned freemen into outlaws and robbers. 
For the practical alternative is not between conven- 



1 Macaulay's "History," vol. 1, p. 371. 



c 



148 HOUSEHOLD REMEDIES. 

tides and rum-riots, but between healthful and bane- 
ful pastimes. Before we can begin to eradicate the 
poison-habit we must make reform more attractive 
than vice ; and, as long as the champions of temper- 
ance shut their eyes to the significance of that truth, 
their legislative enactments will always remain dead- 
letter laws. Our worst defects we owe, in fact, less 
to the shrewdness of our beer-brewing opponents 
than to the blindness of our Sabbatarian allies. A 
free Sunday-garden, with zoological curiosities, foot- 
races, and good music, would do more to promote the 
cause of temperance than a whole army of Hudibras 
revivalists.* 

Individuals, too, should be treated on that plan, 
and, next to absolute abstinence from stimulating poi- 
sons, the most essential condition of a permanent cure 
is a liberal allowance of healthful stimulants, in the 



* ' 'Every one who considers the world as it really exists, and not 
as it appears in the writings of ascetics and sentimentalists, must 
have convinced himself that, in great towns, where multitudes of 
men of all classes and all characters are massed together, and 
where there are innumerable strangers, separated from all domes- 
tic ties and occupations, public amusements of an exciting order 
are absolutely necessary, and that, while they are often the ve- 
hicle and the occasion of evil, to suppress them, as was done by 
the Puritans of the Commonwealth, is simpiy to plunge an im- 
mense portion of the population into the lowest depths of vice." — 
(Decky, "History of Rationalism, " vol. ii, p. 286 (cf. ibid., vol. ii, 
p. 3500 

"Sir," said Johnson, "I am a great friend to public amusements, 
for they keep people from vice." — ("Boswell," p. 171.) 

"Insani fugiunt mundum, immundumque sequuntur." — Gior- 
dano Bruno (Moriz Cariere, "Weltanschauung," p. 396). 



THE ALCOHOL HABIT. 149 

form of diverting pastimes and out-door exercise. 
For the chief danger of a relapse is not the attractive- 
fness of intoxication, but the misery of the after- 
effect, the depressing reaction that follows upon the 
abnormal excitement, and for several weeks seems 
daily to gain strength against the reformatory re- 
solves of the penitent. This apathy of the unstimu- 
lated system can become more intolerable than posi- 
tive pain, and embitter existence till, in spite of 
prayers and pledges, its victims either relapse#f into 
alcohol or resort to cognate stimulants — chloral, ab- 
sinthe, or opium. In stress of such temptatiqns the 
prophylactic influence of a mind-stimulating occupa- 
tion is almost as effective as is the deliquium of dis- 
appointed love. Ennui is the chief coadjutor of the 
poison-fiend. On the Militaar-Ghrenze, the "Military 
Frontier" of Eastern Austria, a soldier's life is a 
ceaseless guerrilla-war against smugglers, outlaws, 
and Bulgarian bed-bugs ; yet hundreds of German 
officers solicit transfer to that region as to a refuge 
from the the temptations of garrison tedium, deliber- 
ately choosing a concentration of all discomforts, as 
a Sehnapps-Kur, a whiskey-cure, as they express it 
with frank directness ; and for similar purposes many 
of Fremont's contemporaries took the prarie-trail to 
the adventure-land of the far "West. Frederick 
Gerstaecker found that the California rum-shops got 
their chief patronage from unsuccessful miners ; the 
successful ones had better stimulants. 

For the first month or two the convalescent should 
not content himself with negative safeguards, but 
make up his mind that temptations will come, and 



150 HOUSEHOLD REMEDIES. 

come in tlie most grievous form, and that active war- 
fare is nearly always the safest plan. The alcohol- 
habit is a physical disease, and a Rocky Mountain 
excursion, a visit to the diggings, a month of sea-side 
rambles and surf-baths, will do more to help a con- 
vert across the slough of despond than a season- 
ticket to the lecture-halls. 

But such excursions should be undertaken in com- 
pany. Soldiers in the ranks will endure hardships 
that would melt the valor of any solitary hero ; and 
in the presence of manly companions the spirit of 
emulation and "approbativeness" will sustain even an 
enervated fellow. The esprit de corps of a temperance 
society is more cogent than its vows. 

An appeal to the passions is the next best thing. 
Everything is fair in the war against alcohol : love, 
ambition, pride, and even acquisitiveness, may be 
utilized to divert the mind from a more baneful pro- 
pensity — for a time, at least. For, after the tempter has 
been kept at bay for a couple of months, its power 
will reach a turning-point ; the nervous irritability 
will subside, the outraged digestive organs resume 
their normal functions, and the potency of the poison- 
hunger will decrease from day to day. After that the 
main point is to gain time, and give Nature a fair 
chance to complete the work of redemption. As the 
vis vitoe recovers her functional vigor the employment 
of other tonics can be gradually dispensed with, ex- 
cept in the moments of unusual dejection that will 
now and then recur — especially on rainy days and 
after sultry nights. But in most such cases the de- 
mon can be exorcised with tlie price of an opera-ticket, 



THE ALCOHOL HABIT. 151 

and not rarely with a liberal dinner. " Good cheer" 
is a suggestive term ; the mess, as well as music, has 
power to soothe the savage soul, and, before invoking 
the aid of medicinal tonics, Bibulus should try the 
dulcifying effect of digestible sweetmeats. 

But, on the other hand, when luck and high sprits 
give a sufficient guarantee against present temptation j 
no opportunity should be missed to forego a meal. 
Fasting is a great system-renovator. Ten fast-days 
a year will purify the blood and eradicate the poison- 
daithesis more effectually than a hundred bottles of 
expurgative bitters. 

And only then, after the paroxysmal phase of the 
baneful passion has been fairly mastered, moral 
suasion gets a chance to promote the work of reform. 
For, while the delirum or the crazing after-effects of 
the alcohol-fever distract the patient, exhortations are 
as powerless as they would be against chronic dysen- 
tery. Dr. Isaac Jennings illustrates the power of the 
poison-habit by the following examples: A clergy- 
man of his acquaintance attempted to dissuade a young 
man of great promise from habits of intemperance. 
" Hear me first a few words," said the young man, 
"and then you may proceed. I am sensible that an in- 
dulgence in this habit will lead to loss of property, 
the loss of reputation and domestic happiness, to pre- 
mature death, and to the irretrievable loss of my im- 
mortal soul ; and now with all this conviction resting 
firmly on my mind and flashing over my conscience 
like lightning, if I still continue to drink, do you sup- 
pose anything you can say will deter me from the 
practice ? v 



152 HOUSEHOLD EEMEDIES. 

Dr. Mussey, in an address 'before a medical society 
mentioned a case that sets this subject in even a 
stronger light. A tippler was put into an almshouse 
in a populus town in Massachusetts. "Within a few 
days he had devised various expedients to procure 
rum, but failed. At length he hit upon one that 
proved successful. He went into the wood-shed of 
the establishment, placed one hand upon a block, and 
with an ax in the other, struck it off at a single blow. 
"With the stump raised and streaming, he ran into the 
house, crying, " Get some rum — get some rum ! my 
hand is off!" In the confusion and bustle of the oc- 
casion somebody did bring a bowl of rum, into which 
he plunged his bleeding arm, then raising the bowl 
to his mouth, drank freely, and exultingly exclaimed, 
"Now I am satisfied ! " 

More than the hunger after bread, more than the 
frenzy of love or hatred, the poison-hunger over- 
powers every other instinct, even the fear of death. 
In Mexico, my colleague, Surgeon Kellerman, of the 
Second Zouaves, was one night awakened by the 
growling of his spaniel, and thought he saw something 
like the form of a man crawling out of his tent. The 
next day the captain informed the company that some 
fellow had entered the hospital-camp with buglarious 
intent, and that he had instructed the sentries to ar- 
rest or shoot all nocturnal trespassers. About a week 
after, the doctor was again awakened by his dog, and 
lighting a match, he distinguished the figure of a 
large man crawling from under his table and carrying 
in his hand a box or a big book. He called upon him 
to stop, cocking his pistol at the same time, but the 



THE ALCOHOL HABIT. 153 

fellow made a rush for the door, and in the next mo- 
ment was floored by a ball that j:>enetrated his skull 
two inches above the neck. He lived long enough to 
confess the motive of his desperate enterprise. His 
regiment had been stationed in Northern Algiers, 
where he learned to smoke opium, and having ex- 
hausted his supply, and his financial resources, as 
well as the patience of the hospital steward, who had 
at various times furnished him with small doses of the 
drug, he felt that life was no longer worth living, and 
resolved to risk it in the attempt at abducting the 
doctor's medicine chest. What can exhortation avail 
against a passion of that sort ? We should learn to 
treat it as the advanced stage of a physical disorder, 
rather than as a controvertible moral aberration. 

And, even after the delirium of that disease has sub- 
sided, homilies should be preceded by an appeal to 
reason. Ignorance is a chief cause of intemperance. 
The seductions of vice would not mislead so many of 
our young men if they could realize the significance 
of their mistake. All the efforts of the Temperance 
party have thus far failed to eradicate the popular 
fallacy that there is some good in alcohol ; that some- 
how or other the magic of a stimulating drug could 
procure its votaries an advantage not attainable by 
normal means. Nor is this delusion confined to the 
besotted victims of the poison-vice. Even among the 
enlightened classes of our population, nay, among the 
champions of temperance, there is still a lingering 
belief that, with due precaution against excess, adul- 
teration, etc., a dram-drinker might " get ahead M of 



154 HOUSEHOLD REMEDIES. 

Nature, and, as it were, trick her out of some extra, 
enjoyment. 

There is no hope of a radical reform till an influen- 
tial majority of all intelligent people have realized the 
fact that this trick is in every instance a losing game, 
entailing penalties which far outweigh the pleasures 
that the novice may mistake for gratuitous enjoy- 
ments, and by which the old habitue can gain only a 
temporary and qualified restoration of the happi- 
ness which his stimulant has first deprived him of. For 
the depression of the vital enegry increases with every 
repetition of the stimulation process, and in a year 
after the first dose all the " grateful exhilarating ton- 
ics" of our professional poison venders cannot restore 
the vigor, the courage, and the cheerfulness which 
the mere consciousness of perfect health imparts to 
the total abstainer. 

A great plurality of all beginners underrate the dif- 
ficulty of controlling the cravings of a morbid appe- 
tite. They remember that their natural inclinations 
at first opposed, rather than encouraged, the indul- 
gence ; they feel that at the present stage of its de- 
velopment they could abjure the passion and keep 
their promise without any difficulty. But they over- 
look the fact that the moral power of resistance de- 
creases with each repetition of the dose, and that the 
time will come when only the practical impossibility 
of procuring their wonted tipple will enable them to 
keep their pledge of total abstinence. It is true that 
by the exercise of a constant self-restraint a person 
of great will-force may resist the progressive tendency 
of the poison-habit and confine himself for years to 



THE ALCOHOL HABIT. 155 

a single cigar or a single bottle of wine per day. But, 
if all waste is sinful, is not this constant pull against 
the stream a wicked misuse of moral energy — a wan- 
ton waste of an effort which in less treacherous 
waters would insure the happiest progress, and pro- 
pel the boat of life to any desired goal ? 

But, while temperance people, as a class, are apt to 
underrate the difficulty of a total cure of a confirmed 
poison-habit, they generally overrate the difficulty of 
total prevention. The natural inclination of a young 
child is in the direction of absolute abstinence from 
all noxious stimulants. I do not speak only of the 
children of temperate people who strengthen that 
inclination by moral precepts, but of drunkards' boys, 
of the misbegotten cadets of our tenement barracks 
and slum-alleys. All who will make their disposition 
a special study may repeat the experiments which 
have convinced me that the supposed effects of 
hereditary propensities are in almost every case due 
to the seductions of a bad example, and that the in- 
fluence of an innate predisposition has been immod- 
erately exaggerated. Watch the young picnickers of 
an orphan-festival, and see what a great majority of 
them will prefer sweet cold milk to iced tea, and the ' 
lemonade-pail to the ginger-beer basket. Offer them 
a glass of liquor and see how few out of the hundred 
will be able to sip it without a shudder. Or let us go 
a step further and interview the inmates of a house 
of correction, or of a Catholic "protectory" for young 
vagrants. The superintendent of a penitentiary for 
adults (in Cologne, Germany,) expressed a conviction 
that a plurality of his prisoners would stretch out 



156 HOUSEHOLD REMEDIES. 

their hands for a bottle of the vilest liquor rather 
than for a piece of gold. In the house of correction 
I would stake any odds that ninety per cent, of all 
boy-prisoners under fourteen would prefer an excur- 
sion-ticket to a bottle of the best wine of Tokay or 
Johannisberg. At home, in a preparatory school of 
all vices, they of course imitate their teachers, but 
only by overcoming almost the same instinctive re- 
pugnance which is the best safeguard of the total ab- 
stainer's child. At the first attempt even the offspring 
of a long lineage of drunkards abhors the taste of al- 
cohol as certainly as the child of the most inveterate 
smoker detests the smell of tobacco. 

But it is true that the impaired vitality of the 
habitual drunkard transmits itself mentally in the 
form of a peculiar disposition which I have found to 
be equally characteristic of the children (and even 
grandchildren) of an opium-eater. They lack that 
spontaneous gayety which constitutes the almost mis- 
fortune-proof happiness of normal children, and, 
without being positively peevish or melancholy, 
their spirits seem to be clouded by an apathy which 
yields only to strong external excitants. But out- 
door work and healthy food rarely fail to restore the 
tone of the mind, and even before the age of puberty 
the manifestations of a more buoyant temper will 
prove that the patient has outgrown the hereditary 
hebetude, and with it the need of artificial stimula- 
tion. Temptation, of course, should always be 
guarded against, and also everything that could tend 
to aggravate the lingering despondency of the con- 



THE ALCOHOL HABIT. 157 

valescent — harsh treatment, solitude, and a monoton- 
ous occupation. 

With normal children such precautions are super- 
fluous. They will resist temptation if we do not force 
it upon them. No need of threats and tearful exhor- 
tations ; you need not warn a boy to abstain from 
disgusting poisons — Nature attends to that ; but 
simply provide him with a sufficient quantity of 
palatable, non-stimulating food, till he reaches the 
age when habit becomes as second nature. It was 
Rousseau's opinion that a taste for stimulants could 
be acquired only during the years of immaturity, and 
that there would be little danger after the twentieth 
year, if in the meanwhile observation and confirmed 
habits had strengthened the protective instincts 
which Nature has erected as a bulwark between inno- 
cence and vice. "We need not fortify that bulwark by 
artificial props, we need not guard it with anxious 
care ; all we have to do is to save ourselves the ex- 
traordinary trouble of breaking it down. After a boy 
becomes capable of inductive reasoning, it can, of 
course, do no harm to call his attention to the evils of 
intemperance, and give him an opportunity to observe 
the successive stages of the alcohol-habit, the gradual 
progress from beer to brandy, from a "state of dim- 
inished steadiness" to delirum tremens. In large 
cities, where the the evils of drunkenness reveal them- 
selves in all their naked ugliness, children can easily 
be taught to regard the poison-vice as a sort of dis- 
ease which should be guarded against, like small-pox 
or leprosy. 

But it should always be kept in mind that even the 



158 HOUSEHOLD REMEDIES. 

milder stimulant-habits have a progressive tendency, 
and that under certain circumstances the attempt to 
resist that bias will overtask the strength of most in- 
dividuals. According to the allegory of the Grecian 
myth, the car of Bacchus was drawn by tigers ; and 
it is a significant circumstances that war, famine and 
pestilence have so often been the forerunners of veri- 
table alcohol-epidemics. The last Lancashire strike 
was accompanied by whisky riots ; the starving 
Silesian weavers tried to drown their misery in 
Schnapps. In France almost every general decline of 
material prosperity has been followed by a sudden in- 
crease of intemperance, and after a prolonged war 
the vanquished party seems to be chiefly liable to 
that additional affliction. The explanation is that, 
after the stimulant-habit has once been initiated, 
every unusual depression of mental or physical vigor 
calls for an increased application of the wonted 
method of relief. Nations who have become addicted 
to the worship of a poison-god will use his temple as 
a place of refuge from every calamity ; and children 
whose petty ailments have been palliated with nar- 
cotics, wine, and cordials, will afterward be tempted 
to drown their deeper sorrow in deeper draughts of 
the same nepenthe. 

And even those who manage to suppress that temp- 
tation have to suppress the revivals of a hard-dying 
hydra, and will soon find that only abstinence from 
all poisons is easier than temperance. 



CHAPTEE VII. 



ENTERIC DISORDERS. 

About a century before the birth of the Emperor 
Augustus, the most popular physician in Rome was 
the Grecian philosopher Asclepiades. His system 
seems to have resembled that of our "movement-cure" 
doctors. Instead of being stuffed with drugs, his pa- 
tients were invited to his paloestra, a sort of out-door 
gymnasium or hygienic garden, where they were 
doctored with gymnastics, wholesome comestibles, 
and, as some writers assert, with flattery — probably 
courteous attention to the jeremiads of crapulent sen- 
ators. At all events, his method proved eminently 
successful, though we need not doubt that all respect- 
able druggists retailed canards about his establish- 
ment. He had devised a special course of gymnastics 
for every disorder of the human organism, and re- 
peatedly declared that he would utterly renounce the 
claim to the title of a physician if he should ever be 
sick for a single day. Medicines he rejected on the 
(159) 



160 HOUSEHOLD BEMEDIES. 

ground that they accomplish by violent means what the 
paloestra-method would effect in an easier way. 

Still, in certain cases, a short, sharp remedy might 
be preferable to an easy going one, but unfortunately 
there is a more serious objection to use of drugs, viz.. 
the danger of complicating instead of curing the dis- 
ease. For — 1. The diagnosis may fail to establish 
the true cause of the disorder. No watch-maker 
would undertake to explain the irregularities of a 
timepiece by merely listening to a description of the 
symptoms, and before he can trace the effect to its 
cause he must minutely inspect the interior mechan- 
ism. But a physican is not only generally obliged to 
content himself with the evidence of the external symp- 
toms, but has to deal with an apparatus so infinitely 
more complex than the most intricate chronometer, that, 
even under normal circumstances, the process of its 
plainest functions has never been fully explained.* 

2. "We risk to mistake the suppression of the symp- 
toms for the suppression of the disease. We would 
try in vain to subdue a conflagration by demolishing 
the fire-bells, but on exactly the same principle the 
mediaeval drug-mongers attempted to restore the 



*' 'Every organic process is a miracle, that is, in every essential 
sense an unexplained phenomenon." — Loeenz Oken. 

"He obstinately refused to take medicine. "Doctor," said he, 
"no plrysicking. Do not counteract the living principle. Let it 
alone ; leave it the liberty of defending itself ; it will do better 
that your drugs. The watch-maker cannot open it, and must in 
handling it, grope his way blindfold and at random. For once 
that he assists and relieves, by dint of torturing it with crooked 
instruments, he injures it ten times, and at last destroys it." — 
(Scott's "Life of Napoleon," p. 368.) 



ENTERIC DISORDERS. 161 

health of their patients by attacking the outward 
symptoms of the disorder. Habitual overeating pro-^ 
duced a sick-headache ; they applied a blister to the 
head. Impure blood covered the neck with ul- 
cers ; they applied a salve to the neck. The alcohol 
vice resulted in a rheumatic affection of the knee- 
joint ; they covered the knee-pan with leeches. They 
suppressed the alarm-signals of the disease, but, 
before the patient could really recover, his constitu- 
tion had to overcome both the malady and the medi- 
cine. 

3. We risk to confound an appeal for rest with an 
appeal for active interference, and thus to turn a tran- 
sient and necessary suspension of an organic function 
into an actual disease. Numerous enteric disorders, or 
bowel-complaints are thus artificially developed. 
The marvelous self -regulating principle of the human 
organism now and then limits the activity of special 
organic functions, in order to defray an unusual ex- 
penditure of vital energy. The after-dinner lassitude 
can thus be explained : the process of digestion en- 
grosses the energies of the system. Mental labor 
retards digestion ; a strenuous muscular effort often 
suspends it entirely for hours together. Fevers, 
wounds, etc., have an astringent tendency, the poten- 
tial resources of the organism are engaged in a pro- 
cess of reconstruction. Perspiration is Nature's ef- 
fort to counteract the influence of an excessive degree 
of heat, and when the effect of sun-heat is aggravated 
by calorific food and superfluous clothing, the work of 
reducing the temperature of the blood almost monop- 
olizes the energies of the system, while at the same 



162 HOUSEHOLD REMEDIES. 

time the diminished demand for animal caloric lessens 
the influence of a chief stimulus of organic activity. 
Warm weather, therefore, indisposes to active exer- 
cise, and produces a (temporary) tendency to costive- 
ness. That tendency is neither abnormal nor morbid, 
and to counteract it by dint of drastic drugs means to 
create, instead of curing, a disease. If a foot-mes- 
senger stops at the wayside to tie his shoe-strings, 
the time thus employed is not wasted. The sudden 
application of a horsewhip would force him to take as 
suddenly to his heels, but during his flight he might 
lose his way, and perhaps his shoes. 

With a few exceptions, which we shall presently 
notice, chronic constipation results from the abuse of 
aperient medicines. A spell of dry, warm weather, 
sedentary work in an overheated room, a change from 
summer to winter diet — perhaps a mere temporary 
abstinence from a wonted dish of aperient food — has 
diminished the stools of an otherwise healthy child. 
The simultaneous want of appetite yields to a short 
fast, but the stringency of the bowels continues, and 
on the third day the parents administer a laxative. 
That for the next twenty-fours the patient feels con- 
siderably worse than before does not shake their faith 
in the value of the drug ; the main purpose has been 
attained — the "bov/els move." Properly speaking* 
that movement is an abnormal convulsion, a reaction 
against the obtrusion of a drastic poison, which has 
"cured" the stringency of the bowels as a shower- 
bath of vitriol would cure the drowsiness of a tired 
man. An imaginary evil has yielded to a real evil, 
and ? what is worse., becomes itself soon real enough 



ENTERIC DISORDERS. 163 

to confirm the opinion of the drug-worshippers that 
the patient must be "put under a course of corrective 
tonics." For very soon the unnatural irritation is fol- 
lowed by an abnormal lassitude, a digestive torpor, 
attended with symptoms of distress that plainly dis- 
tinguish it from the original remissness of the bowels. 
In the eyes of the drug-dupes, however, it is nothing 
but a relapse of the former complaint, and must be 
combated with more effective remedies. "Treacle and 
brimstone, thrice a day," was the verdict of the med- 
iaeval iEsculap. "The timely use of our incompar- 
able invigorant will regulate the action of the bowels 
and impart a generous and speedy impulse to the or- 
ganic functions of the whole body," says the inventor 
of the new patent "liver-regulator " — a new combina- 
tion of " valuable herbs " with the usual basis of al- 
cohol. "A wineglassful every morning." The herbs 
prove their value by enabling the vender to accom- 
modate his customers on Sunday morning, when com- 
mon dram-shops are closed, and with an equal disre- 
gard of times and seasons the alcoholic princixDle 
opens the bowels. The incomparable stimulant ad- 
mits no such excuses as fatigue or warm weather ; the 
charm works ; the regular attacks of a life-endanger- 
ing poison have to be as regularly repelled. Other 
symptoms, such as troubled dreams, fretfulness, heart- 
burn and irregnlar pulse, seem, indeed, to indicate 
the approach of a new disease, but that will be met 
by other drugs, and in the meanwhile the liver-cure 
is continued. After the lapse of a few months the 
patient gets possibly a chance to escape his doom ; 
out-door exercise, the excitement of a pleasant jour- 



164 HOUSEHOLD KEMEDIES. 

ney, a new residence, a change of diet, encourage the 
hope that the bowels may be left to their own re- 
sources, and the " tonic " is provisionally discontin- 
ued. An exceptionally strong constitution may really 
be able to overcome the after-effects of the drug-dis- 
ease (for from beginning to end it has been nothing 
but that), but in a great plurality of cases the event 
proves that the stimulant has fastened upon the sys- 
tem : constipation, in an aggravated form, returns, 
and can now be relieved only by the wonted means 
- — " a fact," as the orthodox drug-doctor would not 
fail to observe, " which should convince idealists that 
now and then Nature can really not dispense with a 
little assistance."* 

That assistance has made the fortune of numerous 
nostrum-mongers, and helped our made-dishes to 
wreck the health of many millions. For, without the 
interference of a positive poison, dietetic abuses have 
to be carried to a monstrous excesss before they will 
result in chronic constipation. A slight stringency of 
the bowels is often simply a transient lassitude of the 
system, and may be safely left to the remedial re- 



* Two generations ago the abuse of purgative drugs was carried 
to a degree which undoubtedly shortened the average longevity of 
many families. Thousands of parents made it a rule (which still 
has its advocates') to dose their children at the end of every month ; 
and Wieland's practical philosopher not only prescribes a laxative 
for every fit of ill humor, but answers the sentimental tirades of 
his wife by sentencing her to a prompt enema : 
" Brummt mein Engel wie ein Bar, 

1 Lise,' spreech ich, ' musst purgiren,* 
Rufe dann den Bader her, 
Lasse sie recht durch-klystiren." 



ENTERIC DISORDERS. 165 

sources of Nature. After the third day, however, the 
disorder demands a change of regimen. A chief ob- 
jection to our system of cookery is the hygienic ten- 
dency of the essence-mania, the concentration of nutri- 
tive elements. Ours is an age of extracts. We have 
moral extracts in the form of Bible-House pamphlets ; 
language-extracts in the form of compendious gram- 
mars ; exercise-extracts under the name of gymnastic 
curriculums ; air-extracts in the shape of oxygen- 
bladders, and a vast deal of such food-concentrations 
as Liebig's soup, fruit-jellies, condensed milk, and 
flavoring extracts. But, somehow or other, the old 
plan seems after all, the best. In the homes of our 
forefathers morals were taught by example, and with 
very respectable results. Six years of grammar-drill 
in a dead language do not further a student as much 
as six months of conversation in a living tongue — the 
concreate beats the abstract. Boat-racing, wood- 
chopping, and mountain-climbing, are healthier, as 
well as more pleasant, than gymnastic crank-work ; 
the diverting incidents of out-door sports which the 
movement-cure doctor tries to eliminate are the very 
things that give interest and life to exercise. And, 
for some reasons, (not easy to define without the help 
of such analogies), concentrated nourishment does 
not agree with the nature of the human organism. 
The lungs find it easier to derive their oxygen from 
woodland air than from a ready-made extract, and the 
stomach, on the whole, prefers to get its nourish- 
ment in the form for which its organism was ori- 
ginally adapted. Want of bulk makes our food so 
indigestible. In fruits and berries — probably the 



166 HOUSEHOLD REMEDIES. 

staple diet of our instinct-taught ancestors the per^ 
centage of nutritive elements is rather small, but the 
residue should not be called worthless, since it serves 
to make the whole more digestible. A large ripe 
watermelon contains about three ounces of saccharine 
elements, which in that combination have a mildly 
aperient effect, while in the form of glucose-candy 
they would produce constipation, heart-burn, and 
flatulence. The coarsest bran-bread is the most di- 
gestible, and to the palate of an unprejudiced child 
also far more attractive than the smooth but chalky 
and insiped starch preparations called baker's bread. 
Graham-bread and milk, whortleberries, rice-pudding, 
and stewed prunes, once or twice a week, generally 
keep the bowels in tolerable order, provided that the 
general mode of life does not prevent the influence of 
the natural peptic stimulants. But even in a case of 
obstinate costiveness few people would resort to drugs 
after trying the effects of a legumen-diet. Beans do 
not agree with some persons (though the Pythagor- 
ean interdict has no hygienic significance),but one of 
the three legumens — beans, peas, and lentils — is pretty 
sure to suit every constitution, and as bowel-regula- 
tors their value can hardly be overrated. Taken like 
medicine at regular intervals of eight hours, and in 
doses of about a pint and a half, the third or fourth 
meal of pea-soup (boiled in soft water and flavored 
with butter andapinch of chopped onions) will prove 
as effective as a moderate medicinal aperient ; but, 
while the effect even of a mild cathartic is followed by 
an astringent reaction, the relief obtained by an ap- 
erient regimen is permanent, unless that effect is per- 



ENTERIC DISORDERS. 107 

sistently counteracted by the original cause of the dis- 
order. Fruit, fresh or stewed, ripe grapes, or tam- 
arind-jelly, and frequent draughts of pure cold water, 
will insure the efficacy of the remedy. 

Besides an astringent diet, the chief predisposing 
causes of constipation are : warm weather, overheated 
rooms, want of exercise, sedentary occupations tight gar- 
ments, the after-effects of drastic drugs, of malarial fe- 
vers, and sometimes of self-abuse. Parturition is fre- 
quently followed by a protracted period of close 
stools. In the most obstinate cases of constipation 
clysters are preferable to cathartics, for the reason 
that the former reach the special seat of the disease, 
viz., the lower part of the rectum, while the latter be- 
gin their work by convulsing the stomach, and, by 
irritating its sensitive membrane, disqualify it for the 
proper performance of its function. But injections, 
even of the simplest kind, should be used only as the 
last resort, after all the following remedies have 
proved ineffective : 

Mastication. — Thoroughly masticate and insalivate 
each morsel of solid food. Eat slowly ; do not soak 
your bread, etc., to facilitate deglutition, but let the 
saliva perform that business. The stomach of bilious 
dyspeptics often rejects a stirabout of bread and milk, 
but accepts the ingredients in a separate form. 

Passive Exercise. — Kneading the abdomen, or riding 
on horseback or in a jolting cart, often affords relief 
by dislodging the obdurated obstructions of the lower 
intestines. 

Cold sponge-baths excite a peristaltic movement of 
the colon, and often induce a direct evacuation. 



168 HOUSEHOLD REMEDIES. 

Air baths have an analogous effect, and in summer 
the bed should be removed to the airiest room in the 
house. After the stools have become more regular, 
exhausting fatigues (in warm weather especially) 
should be carefully avoided. The advent of winter 
greatly lessens the danger of a relapse. Frost is a 
peptic stimulatant, and after October the cold ablu- 
tions can be gradually discontinued. Fresh air, an 
occasional sleigh-ride, or an excursion on a rumbling 
freight-train, will do the rest and the cure is com- 
plete if during the next warm season, the digestive 
organs perform their proper functions without the aid 
of artificial stimulants. The remedies for bilious 
constipation have been mentioned in the chapter on 
" Dyspepsia," but I will here repeat the chief rule 
for the cure of chronic indigestion : " Never eat till 
you have leisure to digest." Avoid after-dinner work ; 
break through every rule of conventional customs, 
and postpone the principal meal to the end of the day, 
rather than let the marasmus of the digestive organs 
reach a degree that calls for a change of climate and 
occupation, as the only alternative of a total collapse. 
Open your bedroom-windows, take a liberal dose of 
fresh spring- water with the last meal, and an air-bath 
before going to bed, and the result will convince 
you that night is not an unpropitious time for diges- 
tion. 

Unlike constipation, diarrhma, even in its transient 
phases, is always a morbid symptom, and a proof 
that either the quality or the excessive quantity of the 
ingested food calls for abnormal means of evacuation. 
For the incipient stages of the disorder the great 



ENTERIC DISORDERS. 169 

specific is fasting. Denutrition, or the temporary 
deprivation of food, exercises an astringent influence, 
as part of its general conservative effect. The organ- 
ism, stinted in the supply of its vital resources, soon 
begins to curtail its current expenditure. The move- 
ments of the respiratory process decrease ; the tem- 
perature of the body sinks, the secretion of bile and 
uric acid is diminished, and before long the retrench- 
ments of the assimilative process react on the func- 
tions of the intestinal organs ; the colon contracts, 
and the smaller intestines retain all but the most ir- 
ritating ingesta.* 

When that remedy fails, the presumption is that 
either some virulent substance resists the eliminative 
efforts of Nature, or else that, in spite of the dimin- 
ished sources of supply, the accumulated alimentary 
material still exceeds the needs of the organism. In 
the latter case, unless a continuation of the fast 
should seem preferable, the waste can be stopped by 
active exercise. After a hard day's work a man can 
assimilate a quantum of food that would afflict an 
idler with grievous crapulence. The Kamtchatka 
savage has earned the right to digest the flesh of the 
brute which he has slain in a rough-and-tumble combat. 
The stomach of the negro does not reject the fruit 



* A persistent hunger-cure will eliminate even an active virus by 
a gradual molecular catalysis and displacement of the inorganic 
elements. The Arabs cure syphilis by quarantines a la Tanner; 
and Dr. C. E. Page mentions the case of a far-gone consumptive 
who starved the tubercles out of his system. Aneurisms (internal 
tumors) have been cured by similar means. 



170 HOUSEHOLD REMEDIES. 

which he has plucked from the top branches of a tall 
forest-tree. Loose bowels become retentive if Epi- 
curus has chopped his own wood and fetched his own 
cooking-water. But the best of all astringent exer- 
cises is a pedestrian excursion. A liberal supply of 
green fruit has a laxative tendency. A campaign in 
an orchard country costs the invaders a good deal of 
laudanum ; in midsummer some forty per cent, of the 
rank and file are generally on the sick-list with diarr- 
hoea. But the first forced march stops such symp- 
toms. Laxatives and pedestrianism are what lectur- 
ers on materia medica call "incompatibles." By a 
combination of foot-journeys and abstinence even a 
malignant case of chronic diarrhoea can soon be 
brought under control, though the debility of the pa- 
tient should limit his first excursions to the precincts 
of his bedroom. Care should, however, be taken not 
to abuse the partially restored vigor of the digestive 
organs, especially during the period of deficient ap- 
petite that often follows a colliquative condition of 
the bowels. Progressive doses of out-door exercise 
will gradually overcome that apathy, and, when the 
stomach volunteers to announce the need of nourish- 
ment, it can be relied upon to find ways and means to 
utilize it. 

But the problem of a complete cure becomes more 
complicated if the bowels have been tortured with 
astringent drugs. Diarrhoea itself is an asthenic con- 
dition, indicating a deficiency of vital strength, yet 
nearly every health-exhausting poison of the vege- 
table and mineral kingdom has been employed to 
paralyze the activity, and, as it were, silence the pro- 



ENTERIC DISORDERS. 171 

test of the rebellious organs. Bismuth, arsenic, calo- 
mel, opium, mercury, nux vomica, zinc salts, acetate 
of lead, and nitrate of silver, are among the gentle 
"aids to Nature 3 ' that have been employed to control 
the revolt of the mutinous bowels. An attempt to 
control a fit of vomiting by choking the neck of the 
patient would be an analogous mistake. The pre- 
scription operates as long as the vitality of the 
bowels is absolutely paralyzed by the virulence of the 
drug, but the first return of functional energy will be 
used to eject the poison. That new protest is silenced 
by the same argument ; for awhile the exhaustion of 
the whole system is mistaken for a sign of submission, 
till a fresh revolt calls for a repetition of the coercive 
measures. In the meantime the organism suffers 
under a compound system of starvation ; the humors 
are surcharged with virulent matter, the whole digest- 
ive apparatus withdraws its aid from the needs of the 
vital economy, and the flame of life feeds on the 
store of tissue ; the patient wastes more rapidly than 
an un-poisoned person would on an air-and-water 
diet. In garrets, where the last piece of furniture 
had been sold to defray the costs of a direful nos- 
trum, I have more than once seen victims of astrin- 
gent poisons in a state of misery which human beings 
can reach by no other road : worn out, corpse-colored, 
emaciated wretches, with that look of listless despair 
which the eyes of a dying beast sometimes assume 
on the brink of Nirvana. The first condition of re- 
covery is the peremptory abolition of the poison-out- 
rage. For the first three days prescribe nothing but 
sweetened rice-water, and only tablespoonful d 



172 HOUSEHOLD REMEDIES. 

of that ; give the stomach a sorely-needed chance of 
rest. On the fourth and fifth day add a few drops of 
milk, and toward the end of the week inspissate the 
broth to the consistency of gruel. There are persons 
with whom milk disagree in all its forms ; for such 
prepare a surrogate of whipped eggs with sugar and 
warm water — a tablespoonful every half-hour. Do 
not hope that the stomach of a far-gone drug-martyr 
will at once tolerate even such feather-weight burdens ; 
it will not repel them with the spasmodic violence that 
characterized its reactions against a virulent nostrum, 
but it will often protest its disability to retain the 
whole quantum. A small but increasing percentage 
will be assimilated, and, if the corresponding enlarge- 
ment of the rations is not overdone, the patient at the 
end of the third or fourth week, may be rewarded by 
the return of something like positive appetite, i. e., a 
craving for more solid food. Try a slice of rice-pud- 
ding and fruit jelly, or a homoepathic dose of blanc 
mange. Try a soft boiled egg or a baked apple. Es- 
chew cordials. Avoid food-extracts, even strong beef- 
tea, which for a person in such circumstances is a 
stimulant rather than a nourishment. In the mean 
time watch the weather, and on the first clear day 
screen the lower windows, open the upper sashes, and 
treat the patient to a sun-bath. Sunlight, applied for 
half an hour to the bare skin, is a better tonic than 
cold water, which invigorates a healthy man, but ex- 
hausts an asthenic invalid. In the form of tepid 
sponge-baths, however, water should be applied as 
soon as the patient can bear the fatigue of keeping on 
his legs for a couple of minutes. The first decided 



ENTERIC DISORDERS. 173 

gain in strength employ in the preparatory exercise 
of pedestrianism. Carpet the room, clear a track for 
a circular walk, provide supports at proper intervals, 
a small table in one corner, a chair or a curtain-strap 
in the other. Interest the patient in his progressive 
achievements, keep a record-book, procure a boxful 
ef chips and tally off each round. Three miles a day 
mark the time when the sanitarium can be transferred 
to the out door world. In a vineyard country devote the 
vintage season to a three weeks' grape-cure. The cure 
consists in dining on bucketsfuls of ripe grapes and 
transparent slices of wheat bread. Grape-breakfasts, 
grape-luncheons, and grape-suppers, ad libitum, but 
no bread, nor anything else that could interfere with 
the system-renovating effect of the sweet abstersive, 
that has been tried with signal success in the treatment 
of bilious dyspepsia, gout, and cutaneous diseases.* 
Extreme caution in the use of animal food, acids, and 
fermented beverages, for the first six months at least, 
is as necessary as after an attack of dysentery, which 
should be similarily treated, except that a more rapid 



* The grape cures of Thionville, Staremberg, Meran, Lintz, and 
the Bergstrasse, near Mannheim, are yearly visited by thousands. 
In the United States the best facilities might be found at Ham- 
mondsport, Flushing, and Iona Island, New York ; Salem, Massa- 
chusetts; Hagerstown, Maryland; Lebanon, Columbia, and Eagle- 
ville, Pennyslvania ; Golconda, Illinois ; Hermann, Missouri ; 
Cincinnati, Delaware, and Kelly's Island, Ohio. All Southern 
California is now studded with vineyards, and the TraubenJcnr of 
Meran hardly excels the grapes of San Gabriel and Annaheim. 
Five cents a pound for the ripest bunches is the average price on 
Kelly's Island; in California from two to three cents a pound : in 
larger quantities perhaps even less. 



174 HOUSEHOLD REMEDIES. 

recovery of strength will permit a speedier return to 
out-door and active exercise. 

Colic can generally be traced to the presence of fer- 
menting fluids, and is the penalty of excessive indul- 
gence in such beverages as mush, new beer, fresh ci- 
der, together with sour milk and watery vegetables, but 
may in rarer cases indicate the agency of more dan- 
gerous substances, drastic mineral acids, putrefactive 
and zymotic poisons, noxious gasses, etc. Rest and 
warm bandages are the best remedies. The antidotes 
of corrosive poisons will be named in a separate chapter. 
The pains of gastric spasms, a consequence of dietetic 
sins, may be alleviated by manipulation and friction 
with a moist piece of flannel ; in extreme cases, indi- 
cating the presence of virulent acids, by means of a 
stomach-pump. Generally a semi-horizontal position, 
reclining on the left side, with the upper part of the 
body slightly raised, together with local friction, will 
considerably ease the distressed organ, though inter- 
mittent griping pangs may continue till the alchemy 
of the physiological workshop has neutralized the 
irritating substance. From a kindred affection colic 
can be distinguished by a simple test : if pressure 
against the upper part of the groin increases the pain 
the complaint is an inflammation of the peritonaeum, 
but otherwise due to the presence of acid fluids or 
expansive gases. Painter's colic may be recognized 
by the discoloration of the gums and lips, and can be 
cured only by the removal of the cause. A napkin, 
sprinkled with aromatic vinegar, and tied loosely 
across the nostrils will, however, lessen the effect of 
the noxious effluvia ; and the Italians recommend the 



ENTERIC DISORDERS. 175 

internal use of olive-oil (cotton-seed oil would prob- 
ably serve the same purpose) and wine. For a few 
days after a severe attack of colic, pure water should 
be the only drink. 

Flatulence tends to obviate the proximate cause of 
intestinal cramps. As a concomittant of dyspepsia, 
it indicates the accumulation of undigested food and 
the necessity of greater abstemiousness. Burnt mag- 
nesia absorbs gastric acids, but at the same time im- 
pairs the functional vigor of the stomach too often to 
be, on the whole, a lesser evil. It is, however, one of 
the very few chemical remedies which act, tempora- 
rily, at least, by a direct removal of the proximate 
cause. Its permanent removal can be effected only 
by a change of regimen. 

In the treatment of hemorrhoids, too, we have to 
distinguish between palliatives and radical remedies. 
If the statistics of the complaint could be tabulated, 
I believe it would be found that its centers of distri- 
bution coincide with a prevalence of sedentary occu- 
pations, combined with the use of narcotic drinks, es- 
pecially coffee. Monkeys have posterior callosities, 
and their habits prove that an occasoinal sitting pos- 
ture is normal to the primates of the animal kingdom. 
But, in a state of nature at least, our arboreal relatives 
are too restless to avail themselves of their sitting fa- 
cilities oftener than five or six times a day — for about 
a minute at a time. In menageries they become se- 
date enough for ten-minute sessions. But a German 
chancery-clerk has to sit fifteen hours a day, await- 
ing promotion and the supper hour, for he is often 
required to eat his dinner in situ. If his dinner-bas- 



176 HOUSEHOLD REMEDIES. 

ket is sent from a cheap boarding-house, it is sure to 
contain a selection of highly astringent comestibles 
— tough beef, leathery potato-chips, all-spice, ginger- 
cakes and pickles. The accompanying flask contains 
coffee. If the man of sessions stoops, he damages 
his lungs ; if he leans against the edge of the table, 
he may endanger his stomach ; but, as sure as he 
sits, he compresses the region of the vena portce. Ob- 
structions of that vein are favored by two circum- 
stances : it has to pass a double system of capillaries, 
and, before it can reach the liver, it has to pump its 
heavy blood upward. Sooner or later the incessant 
pressure results in varicose enlargements, actual ob- 
struction occurs, the vein-bags become engorged and 
at last inflamed, and their rupture discharges the 
blood, which mingles with the secretions of the rec- 
tum, and causes that incessant pricking and burning 
that make haemorrhoids (emerods, piles) as trouble- 
some as a combination of itch and gout. An astrin- 
gent diet aggravates the evil by inspissating the 
blood and retarding the process of circulation. The 
stricken Philistines obtained relief by sacrificing gol- 
den facsimiles of the afflicted parts, and cauteriza- 
tions temporarily free the obstructed passages ; but 
the days of miracles are past, and, as long as the 
cause continues to operate, it would not avail the pa- 
tient to sacrifice his entire stock of emerods. Inunc- 
tions of warm tallow will palliate the itch. Common 
mutton tallow serves that purpose as well as any pat- 
ent ointment, for itch and its cognate complaints are 
not amenable to the influence of the faith-cure. The 
radical remedies are gymnastics and an aperient diet. 



ENTEEIC DISORDERS. 177 

Tlie gymnastic specifics are the exercises that pro- 
mote deep and full respiration, and at the same time 
react on the abdominal cavity, as spear-throwing, 
swinging by the arms, and dumb-bell practice. The 
diet should be digestible, and as fluid as possible ; 
while exercise stimulates the circulation, the diluents 
will attenuate the blood, and thus obviate the proxi- 
mate cause of the disorder. If the patient has to 
stick to his office, he should procure a combination- 
desk (which any carpenter can construct without in- 
fringement of patents), and stand and sit by turns. 

The ancients kept slaves who had to work all day, 
sitting before a primitive grist-mill, and it is possible 
that haemorrhoids are really a very antique complaint. 
But during the age of gymnastics and unfrequent 
meals it is not probable that people suffered much 
from maw-worms. Parasites are marvelous colon- 
izers. Wherever the ground is prepared for their re- 
ception, the seed is sure to make its appearance. 
There are about sixty different kinds of mildew, a 
special variety for nearly every special kind of fruit 
or vegetable ; and, if a decaying berry of the rarest 
sort is exposed to the open air, it will soon be cov- 
ered with its specific kind of mold. A piece of putrid 
flesh will attract blow-flies, even where flies of that 
sort have never been seen before. The germs of num- 
berless parasites fill the air, and each species, after its 
kind, will promptly fasten upon every sort of decay- 
ing or stagnant organic matter, even in the interior 
of the body. But in the living organism of the hu- 
man system such stagnations are wholly abnormal. 
In the economy of the digestive organs peptic disin- 



178 .HOUSEHOLD REMEDIES. 

tegration should precede putrefactive decay ; the 
chyle should never stagnate, the stream of the or- 
ganic functions should move with an uninterrupted 
current. There are rivers that become so low in 
summer that pools of water can be found only in the 
deeper cavities of the river-bed, and such pools are 
sure to swarm with "wrigglers," or incipient gnats. 
But, as soon as the current of the rising river drains 
those pools; the wrigglers speedily vanish. 

The maw-worm plague is caused and should be 
cured on the same principle. Most people eat too 
often. Before the stomach can dispose of the first 
meal, it receives a second consignment, and soon 
after a third, of comestibles elaborately contrived to 
retard digestion ; afternoon work monopolizes the en- 
ergies of the system ; the melange in the small intes- 
tines becomes unmanageable, stagnates, and at last 
ferments. Babies are gorged with milk till the con- 
tents of the little vessel literally spill at the muzzle ; 
they are swaddled and bandaged, kept in horizontal 
confinement, and anxiously prevented from every 
motion that might ease the labor of the sorely over- 
taxed bowels. Fresh air, the next best peptic stimu- 
lant, is likewise carefully excluded. Nature fights 
the enemy for a week or two, but at last succumbs to 
odds : fermentation sets in ; parasites fasten upon 
their well-prepared pabulum, and soon the tortures 
of the mummified little martyr are aggravated by the 
wriggling of hundreds of ascarides. Nervous chil- 
dren can thus be worried into epileptic fits, and even 
delirium and brain-fever. Locally, the worm plague 
produces constipation, haemorrhages (often resem- 



ENTEKIC DISORDERS. 179 

bling the symptoms of true hemorrhoids), and burn- 
ing stools. 

If the evil has reached proportions that defy diet- 
etic specifics, the removal of the cause (as in pruigo, 
scabies, and syphilis) requires the application of ar- 
tificial remedies. Injections of warm water with an 
infusion of quassia, or carbolic acid, will expel pin- 
worm ; oil of chenopodium (worm-seed) in minute 
doses, administered with a tea-spoonful of castor-oil, 
is an effective prescription for the expulsion of the 
"round-worm." 

Among the remedies against tcenice, or tape-worms, 
the following vegetable specifics are not less effective 
and much safer than the calomel preparations which 
were formerly prescribed for that purpose : Pome- 
granate-bark (Granati fructus cortex)/ male fern 
{Filix mascula) / but especially pounded pumpkin-seed . 
Three ounces of the fresh seed, mixed with a pint of 
water and pounded into an emulsion, taken after a 
twenty-four hours' fast, rarely fail to evict the tenant 
within three hours. 

But the germs of the parasites remain behind, and 
the same predisposing conditions may at any time 
effect their redevelopment. Dietetic remedies must 
complete the cure. Children should be restricted to 
three meals a day. Let them earn their recovery by 
exercise — running, tumbling, dangling at the end of 
a grapple-swing. Adults should limit themselves to 
a lunch and a good dinner, drink a liberal quantum 
of fresh, cold spring-water, but no fermented bever- 
age, and strictly abstain from indigestible food, espe- 
cially cheese, sour rye-bread, sauerkraut, archaic 



180 HOUSEHOLD KEMEDIES. 

sausages, pickles, and hard boiled eggs. Light 
bread, cream, and grapes (or baked apples), should 
constitue the staple of the diet. A two weeks' grape- 
cure can do harm. An occasional fast-day will insure 
the elimination of undigested food-deposits. Pin- 
worms that have escaped the day of wrath may nowl 
and then betray their presence, but they have ceased 
to multiply, and, after the current of the organic cir- 
culation has once been fairly re-established, intestinal 
parasites will disappear like the wrigglers of a drained 
river-pool. 



CHAPTEE VIII. 



NERVOUS MALADIES. 

Hygienic pathology, or the plan of curing the dis- 
orders of the human organism by the aid of the reme- 
dial agencies of Nature, is founded on the fact that 
disease is not only a wholly abnormal condition, but 
that within the years allotted to the individuals of 
our species, there is a strong healthward tendency in 
the constitution of the human system, which tendency 
does not fail to assert itself as soon as the predispos- 
ing cause of the disorder has been removed. In the 
treatment of consumption and scrofula, the principles 
(of this theory have been generally recognized ; but I 
believe that their application to the nervous diseases 
(asthenia, neurosis, chlorosis, hysteria, nervous debil- 
ity) is destined to effect a still greater reform in the 
present system of therapeutics. 

The study of biology is largely a study of hereditary 
influences. In the form and structure, in all the pe- 
culiar life-habits of each organic being, we can trace 
the outcome of ancestral transmissions and as a gen- 
(181) 



& v 



182 HOUSEHOLD KEMEDXES. 

eral rule, tlie persistence of such peculiarities corre- 
sponds to the length of time during which the influ- 
ence of their causes was impressed upon the charac- 
ter of the species. The period of artificial civiliza- 
tion, even if considered as coeval with the era of re- 
corded history, is but a moment compared with the 
ages during which man-like creatures, the ancestors 
of our domestic animals and the prototypes of our 
cultivated plants, existed in the warmer zones of our 
planet. After six thousand years of cultivation on 
parched hill-sides, the vine is still by preference a 
tree-shade plant. After many thousands generations 
of cats have been fed and petted in daytime and ne- 
glected after dark, puss is still a night-prowler. Barn- 
yard fowl have still a predilection for thorny jungles, 
and in the plains of Russia the descendants of the 
mountain-goat climb wood- piles and cottage-roofs. 
In the constitution of all organic beings there is a 
tendency to revert to the original life-habits of the 
species. Biologists have long recognized the signifi- 
cance of that law, but its hygienic importance has 
hardly begun to be understood. For it implies not 
less than this : That the vital functions of every liv- 
ing being are performed more easily and more vigor- 
ously under the conditions to which the constitution 
of its organism was originally adapted. A swamp- 
boa may subsist for years in a dry board cage ; eagles 
have been chained to a post for a quarter of a cen- 
tury, and lost the gloss of their feathers, their vigor, 
their courage, though not their lives. No drugs would 
cure the ailments of such captives ; but restore them 
to their native haunts, and see how fast they will re- 



NERVOUS MALADIES. 183 

gain their native vigor ! Their infirmities could not 
have been traced to any single cause, but were due to 
the combined influence of numerous unnatural con- 
ditions. 

A similar combination of abnormal circumstances 
causes thousands of the perplexing complaints known 
as nervous diseases — nervous debility, languor, want 
of vital vigor. The introduction of narcotic drinks is 
no sufficient explanation for the present increase of 
such disorders. Prince Piickler-Maskau describes an 
iron-fisted Arab chieftain of Southern Tunis who, in 
his eightieth year, could manipulate a bow that would 
have nonplused the champions of our archery clubs, 
who undertook an expedition that kept him in the 
saddle for three days and two nights, and who could 
abstain from food for the same length of time, but al- 
ways traveled with a skinful of moist coffee-paste, 
which he sucked and chewed like tobacco. West 
China mountaineers, able to contest the prize of any 
weight-lifting match or wrestling-bout, and of other- 
wise most abstemious habits, can not subsist without 
a daily dose of the national beverage. No sensible 
person would maintain that such people owe their 
vigor to their narcotic tipples ; no pathologist would 
deny that it deprives them of part of their strength, 
but that its use alone could cause the premature de- 
crepitude of millions of Indo-Germanic invalids 
would be an equally untenable assertion. It is merely 
an additional factor in the multitude of unnatural 
habits that make up the misery of our modern modes 
of life. 

That our primogenitors passed their days among 



184 HOUSEHOLD REMEDIES. 

trees is one of the few points on which Moses and 
Darwin agree ; whether four-handers or frugivorous 
two-handers, they certainly were forest-creatures, and 
breathed an air saturated with elements of which the 
atmosphere of our tenement barracks is more devoid 
than the briny breeze of the ocean. Our lungs suffer 
for it ; but not our lungs alone. Besides, being the 
best pulmonary pabulum, oxygen is a nerve-tonic ; a 
forester, a hunter, a Swiss shepherd-boy, in a state of 
tubercular consumption, would be less exceptional 
phenomena than in a state of nervous fretfulness. A 
constitutional kind of good- humor sweetens the 
hardships of the overtaxed peasantry of Southern 
Europe, as its absence certainly aggravates the mis- 
ery of our factory-slaves. And it would be a mistake 
to suppose that only summer air can exercise this 
nerve-soothing influence. Let a chlorotic girl take a 
sleigh-ride on a cold, clear winter day, or through a 
snow-storm ; let her skate ; give her a chance to get 
an hour's out-door exercise even on drizzly or frosty 
days. The north wind may white -freeze her ear-tips, 
but it will restore the color of her cheeks, it will re- 
store her appetite, her energy, and her buoyant 
spirits. Those whom necessity compels to limit 
their out-door rambles to the half-mile between 
home and shop, should let the night make up 
for the shortcomings of the day, and sleep — 
in dry weather, at least — in the draught of a wide- 
open window. Only a first experiment of that sort 
will necessitate the addition of a night-cap to one's 
bedclothing ; and even nervous ladies will resist the 
temptation to cover up their faces, if they find how soon 



NERVOUS MALADIES. 185 

the wonted morning languor gives way to the influence 
of Nature's restorative. Those who dislike to risk the 
discomfort of initiation before ascertaining the value 
of the remedy can make another test-experiment : 
After a summer excursion, when fatigue and early 
rising enable anybody to sleep soundly in an open 
tent, the first few nights after returning home will be 
a favorable time for defying the night-air supersti- 
tion and sleeping, perhaps with slight qualms of the 
old prejudice, but without the least bodily discomfort, 
on a balcony or in an open hall, with open windows 
on all sides. After a week, transfer the couch to the 
old air-tight bedroom, and note the result : All the 
next forenoon a queer feeling of discomfort, as after 
a prolonged exposure to the fumes of a smoky kitchen 
will illustrate the difference between natural and un- 
natural modes of life. To persons who have thus 
emancipated themselves from the delusions of the 
night-air dread, the atmosphere of a close bedroom is 
oppressive enough to spoil the night's rest and bring 
on a relapse of many of the distressing concomitants 
of nervous insomnia. A slight elevation of the win- 
dow-sash will remedy the evil, and we might expati- 
ate upon tbe correlation between the nerve-centers 
and the respiratory apparatus of the human body, 
but the plain ultimate reason is that the organism has 
been restored to an essential element of its original 
existence. 

Jacob Engel has a story of a splenetic student who 
composed his own funeral dirge, with a lugubrious 
list of the sorrows from which he anticipated demise 
would liberate his soul. On discovering the lyric, 



186 HOUSEHOLD REMEDIES. 

his father ordered him to excavate a gTavel-bank for 
a family vault, as none of his relatives could be ex- 
pected to survive his untimely fate. The prescription 
proved a success, and a few weeks later Heraclitus 
Junior was caught writing sonnets to the hired girl. 
Want of exercise is, indeed, a most fruitful cause of 
nervous maladies. Our Darwinian relatives, creatures 
so similar to us in the structure of every muscle, every 
joint and sinew of their bodies, are the most restless 
habitants of the woods. "It makes one dizzy to 
watch the evolutions of the long-armed gibbons, " 
Victor Jacquemont writes from the Nerbudda ; " the 
first one I saw made me think that he was suffering 
from an acute attack of St. Yitus's fits, but I have 
found out that it is a chronic disease. They keep 
moving while the sun is in sight. " Savages alternate 
their wigwarm holiday with periods of prodigious ex- 
ertion, and an occasional mountain tour would atone 
for a good many days of city life, but hardly for 
weeks of sedentary occupation. Without at least one 
hour per day of out-door exercise, no native strength of 
constitution can resist the morbific influences of stag- 
nant humors. Of the immortal soul's dependence 
upon the conditions of the body there are few stranger 
illustrations than the psychic influence of narcoctic 
drugs. A mere indigestion can temporarily meta 
morphose the character of the patient, and all man- 
ner of symptoms ascribed to "heart-disease," aneur- 
ism, intestinal parasites, spinal or cerebral affections, 
are often simply due to depraved humors and their 
reaction on the nervous system. By increasing the 
action of the circulatory system, physical exercise 



NERVOUS MALADIES. 187 

promotes the elimination of such humors, with their 
whole train of morbid consequences — chlorosis, tant- 
rums, troubled dreams, and the nervous affections 
proper ; restlessness and want of vital energy. 
"What amounts of "tonic" nostrums — keeping their 
promise of restoring the vigor of the system by pro- 
ducing a fever-energy — would be thrown in the gut- 
ter, if the patient could be persuaded to try the re- 
cipe of Jacob Engel ! "When I reflect on the immu- 
nity of hard-working people from the effects of 
wrong and over-feeding," says Dr. Boerhaave, "I can 
not help thinking that most of our fashionable dis- 
eases might be cured mechanically instead of chemic- 
ally, by climbing a bitterwood-tree, or chopping 
it down, if you like, rather than swallowing a decoc- 
tion of its disgusting leaves." For male patients, 
gardening, in all its branches, is about as fashionable 
as the said diseases, and no liberal man would shrink 
from the expense of a board fence, if it would induce 
his drug-poisoned wife to try her hand at turf-spading, 
or, as a last resort, at hoeing, or even a bit of wheel- 
barrow-work. Lawn-tennis will not answer the occa- 
sion. There is no need of going to extremes and 
exhausting the little remaining strength of the pa- ' 
tient, but without a certain amount of fatigue the 
specific fails to operate, and experience will show 
that labor with a practical purpose — gardening, boat- 
rowing, or amateur carpentering — enables people to 
beguile themselves into a far greater amount of hard 
work than the drill-master of a gymnasium could get 
them to undergo. Besides the potential energy that 
turns hardships into play-work, athletics have the 



188 HOUSEHOLD KEMEDIES. 

further advantage of a greater disease-resisting ca- 
pacity. Their constitution does not yield to every 
trifling accident ; their nerves can stand the wear and 
tear of ordinary excitements ; a little change in the 
weather does not disturb their sleep ; they can digest 
more than other people. Any kind of exercise that 
tends to strengthen — not a special set of muscles, but 
the muscular system in general — has a proportionate 
influence on the general vigor of the nervous organ- 
ism, and thereby on its pathological power of resist- 
ance. 

For nervous children my first prescription would 
be — the open woods and a merry playmate ; for the 
chlorotic affections of their elder comrades — some di- 
verting, but withal fatiguing, form of manual labor. 
In the minds of too many parents there is a vague 
notion that rough work brutalizes the character. 
The truth is, that it regulates its defects : it calms 
the temper, it affords an outlet to things that would 
otherwise vent themselves in fretfulness and ugly 
passions. Most school-teachers know that city chil- 
dren are more fidgety, more irritable and mischievous 
than their village comrades ; and the most placid fe- 
males of the genus homo are found among the well- 
fed but hard-working housewives of German Penn- 
sylvania. 

That hard work in the factory does not lead to the 
same result is due to the contrast between fresh and 
foul air ; but also to the difference between sunshine 
and artificial twilight. Light is a chief source of vital 
energy, and every deduction from the proper share 
of that natural stimulus of the organic process is 



NERVOUS MALADIES. 189 

sure to tell upon the well-being of every living organ- 
ism. See the difference between the vegetation of the 
south side and the north side of the same mountain 
range, the gradations in the stunted appearance of 
hot-house plants, house-plants, and cellar-plants, the 
achromatism and strange deformities of animals in- 
habiting the waters of underground rivers. The direct 
rays of the sun seem to exercise many of the effects 
which the manufacturers of "electric brushes ascribe 
to the use of their contrivances. In ancient Koine 
special sun-bathing houses were used as a specific 
for a form of asthenia, which was then more frequent 
than premature debility — the infirmity of extreme old 
age. In winter-time white-haired invalids, stripped 
to the waist, basked for hours under the glass-roof of 
a solarium which excluded the chill winds, but ad- 
mitted the light from all sides, and the same remedy 
would prove even more effective in the treatment of 
chlorosis — properly a twilight-disease, and due to the 
same causes that rob a cellar-plant of its color and 
vigor. A board fence may fail to remove the fear of 
peeping Toms, but on sequestered mountain-meadows, 
warmed by a July sun, or better yet on the beach of 
a lonely sea-shore, the patient may while away an 
hour in the costume of the Nereids ; or, after the man- 
ner of the sensible Brazilians, children may at safe 
hours be permitted to turn a leafy garden into para- 
dise. Persons of highly limited means can utilize 
the elevation of their garrets, and use a half-screened 
window-corner as a solarium,^ for hours together. 
The expectation of disastrous consequences will be as 
surely disappointed as the dread of the night air. 



190 HOUSEHOLD KEMEDIES. 

"Colds" are not taken in that way. The hairy coat 
which may, or may not, have covered the bodies of 
our prehistoric forefathers, did not interfere with the 
beneficial action of the solar rays, and it is not the 
least among the disadvantages of onr artificial modes 
of life, that this benefit is now limited to one-tenth, 
or, in the case of a muffled-up lady of fashion, to one 
per cent, of the cutaneous surface. 

The diet should be sparing, but not to the degree 
of being astringent, for chronic constipation and ner- 
vousness are almost invariable concomitants. There 
are many appetizing vegetable articles of diet of 
which a liberal quantum can be eaten without exceed- 
ing the needs of the organism ; but here, more than 
elsewhere, it is of paramount importance to remem- 
ber the chief rule of the peptic catechism : not to 
eat till we have leisure to digest. Vertigo, myopsis 
(visions of floating specks clouding the eye-sight), 
palpitation of the heart, and the indescribable ir- 
ritations and discomforts of the sufferers from ner- 
vous disorders, can frequently be traced to the in- 
fluence of after-dinner work — work, perhaps, requir- 
ing severe mental application, though the brain aches 
for rest — while about a million of American school- 
teachers and counting house drudges still aggravate 
their misery by the use of tonic bitters in the United 
States, and of ginger-drops and chile Colorado in South 
America, Narcotic drinks are an equally fruitful source 
of nervous affections, and tea, the chief culprit, is too 
often mistaken for a liberator, A cup of " good, 
strong tea " relieves a nervous headache in exactly 
the same manner that medicated whisky relieves the 



NERVOUS MALADIES. 191 

distress of a torpid liver, and the fact that the abnor- 
mal excitment is regularly followed by a depressing 
reaction would not undeceive the victim of the stimu- 
lant-delusion, if the repetition of the stimulation-pro- 
cess were not sure to impair the efficacy of the tonic, 
unless the dose is steadily increased. Only after that 
increase has in vain been carried to an alarming ex- 
tent, the patient is apt to look for a less delusive 
remedy. And yet the sudden discontinuance of a 
long-wonted tonic will at first aggravate the distress 
to a degree that would overtax the endurance of 
most persons, and the trials of the transition period 
should therefore be mitigated by the influence of 
some healthy stimulus — the diversion of a journey, 
or of an exciting and very pleasant occupation. 
Indigestible made dishes should also be carefully 
avoided, and the gratitude of suffering thousands — 
both nurses and patients — awaits the philanthropist 
who shall give us a treatise on the art of preparing 
an appetizing dinner without the use of the frying- 
pan. Nervous people are extremely fastidious, es- 
pecially in the choice of their solid food, and doubly 
so after the interdict of their favorite liquids, yet a 
single plateful of fried and spiced viands may bring 
on a relapse of the unhappiest symptoms, with the 
attendant mental affections of the poor followers of 
Epicurus who " would be perfect gentlemen if it were 
not for their tantrums. " Spleen is a disorder of the 
nerves, rather than of the brain, and a large com- 
plexus of nerve-organs is situated in the close prox- 
imity of the stomach. The eel-stews of Mohammed 
IT. kept the whole empire in a state of nervous-ex, 



192 HOUSEHOLD KEMEDIES. 

ment, and one of the meat-pies which King Philip 
failed to digest caused the revolt of the Netherlands. 
If hired girls had a vote in the matter, ladies of a 
certain temper would be restricted to a diet of attrac- 
tive vegetables. 

Everything that tends to exhaust the vital resources 
of the body disposes it to nervous disorders. Sexual 
excesses, therefore, contribute a large share to the de- 
bilitating influences of civilized life. Hysterical af- 
fections may sometimes result from the unsatisfied 
cravings of the sexual passions, but chiefly because 
the suppression of that instinct often leads to its per- 
version. There is such a thing as mental incontinence ; 
the writings of hysterical nuns, for instance, abound 
with erotic effusions. And, while spinsters and widows 
are often strong-minded to an unsexing degree, the 
most pitifully nervous women are found among the 
wives of the wretches who consider a marriage-con- 
tract a license for illimited venery. For girls of 
a chlorotic disposition, a prurient literature does what 
sewer-gas would do for a consumptive — though idle- 
ness will find other means to supply the want of dime- 
novels. In such cases, out-door work is worth all the 
medicines of the drug-market. 

A quiet country home is the best refuge from the 
sufferings of that dreary form of nervous disorders 
that result from the reaction of deep mental wounds 
— disappointed hope, reverses of fortune, or the loss of 
a favorite child. Seasons make no difference ; the 
very hardships of rustic life often act as a balm in 
such afflictions. After the death of his only son, 
Goethe sought solace among the pines of the Thur- 



NERVOUS MALADIES. 193 

ingian forest, like Shenstone in his Ainsford solitude, 
and Petrarch in his hermitage of Vaucluse. "A sick 
man" says old Burton, " sits upon a green bank, and 
when the dog-star parcheth the plains and dries up 
the rivers, he lies in a shady bower, fronde sub arbor ea 
ferveniia temper at astra, and feeds his eyes with a 
variety of objects, herbs, trees, to comfort his misery 
or takes a boat on a pleasant evening, and rows upon 
the waters, which Plutarch so much applauds, iElian 
admires, upon the river Pinrus — in those Thessalian 
fields, beset with green bays, where birds so sweetly 
sing that passengers, enchanted, as it were, with their 
heavenly music, ominum laborum et cur ar um oblivis- 
cantur, forget forthwith all labors, care and grief." 
Especially if the passenger can be persuaded to row 
his own boat, and to dismiss the delusion that the 
night-mists of his Pineus have to be counteracted 
with a bottle of alcoholic bitters. 

In the homes of the poor, nervous afflictions are 
sometimes the result of insufficient sleep. After a 
sleepless night, the attempt to engage in labor of an 
exacting kind will lead to a fever of fidgets and ner- 
vous twitchings, and the same consequences may re- 
sult from the habit of rising every morning before 
Nature admits that the gain of the night has quite 
equalized the expenses of the foregoing day. But it 
is a true saying that we are not nourished by what 
we eat, but by what we digest, and that an indigesti- 
ble meal is as bad as a fast-day. Nervous people 
should remember that unquiet sleep is not much bet- 
ter than sleeplessness, and that the blessing of a good 
night's rest can be enjoyed only in a well-ventilated 



194 HOUSEHOLD KEMEDIES. 

bedroom. With the largest possible supply of fresh 
air by day and by night, with sunshine, out-door ex- 
ercise and healthy food, the most obstinate nervous 
disorders can be gradually overcome; the impedi- 
ments yield, till the river of life flows with an unob- 
structed current : the body has been restored to the 
conditions of existence for which its organism was 
originally adapted. 



CHAPTEE IX. 



CATAREH.— PLEURISY.— CROUP. 

The progress of the healiag art, as distinguished 
from certain sterile branches of medical science, can 
be best measured by the progress of our insight into 
the causes of our special maladies. For the acci- 
dental discovery of a " specific " means generally no- 
thing but the discovery of a method for suppressing 
special symptoms of a disease. Quinine subdues 
chills, but does not prevent a relapse of febrile affec- 
tions ; brandy neither cures nor subdues dyspepsia, 
but merely interrupts it with a transient alcohol-fe- 
ver. But, as soon as we ascertained that scrofula or 
the " kings-evil," was not caused by a mysterious 
dispensation of Providence, but by the bad food and 
foul air, the cure of the disease became easy enough ; 
the kings-evil disappeared without the aid of the 
king. 

That " colds," or catarrhal affections, are so very 
common — so much, indeed, as to be considerably 
more frequent than all other diseases taken together 
(195) 



196 HOUSEHOLD REMEDIES. 

— is mainly due to the fact that the cause of no other 
disorder of the human organism is so generally mis- 
understood. Few persons have recognized the ori- 
gin of yellow fever ; about the primary cause of asth- 
ma we are yet all in the dark ; but in regard to 
" colds " alone the prevailing misconception of the 
truth has reached the degree of mistaking the cause 
for a cure, and the most effective cure for the cause 
of the disease. If we inquire after that cause, ninety- 
nine patients out of a hundred, and at least nine out 
of ten physicians, would answer, " Cold weather," 
" Eaw March winds," or " Cold draughts," in other 
words, out door air of a low temperature. If we in- 
quire after the best cure, the answer would be, 
" Warmth and protection against cold draughts " — i. 
e., warm, stagnant, indoor-air. Now, I maintain that it 
can be proved, with an absolute certainty as any physi- 
ological fact admits of being proved, that warm, vitiated 
indoor air is the cause, and cold out-door air the best 
cure, of catarrhs. Many people " catch cold " every 
month in the year, and often two or three times a 
month. Very few get off with less than three colds a 
year ; so that an annual average of five catarrhs would 
probably be an underestimate. For the United States 
alone that would give us a yearly aggregate of two 
hundred and fifty -five million "colds." That such facil- 
ities for investigation have failed to correct the errors 
of our exegetical theory is surely a striking proof how 
exclusively our dealings with disease have been lim- 
ited to the endeavor of suppressing the symptoms in- 
stead of ascertaining and removing the cause. For, 
as a test of our unbiased faculty of observation, the 



CATARRH — PLEURISY— CROUP. 197 

degree of that failure would lead to rather unpro- 
nounceable conclusions. What should we think of 
the scientific acumen of a traveler who, after a careful 
examination of the available evidence, should persist 
in maintaining that mosquitoes are engendered by frost 
and exterminated by sunshine ? Yet, if his attention 
had been chiefly devoted to the comparative study of 
mosquito-ointments and mosquito-bars, he might, for 
the rest, have been misled by such circumstances as 
the fact that mosquitoes abound near the ice-bound 
shores of Hudson Bay, and are rarely seen on the 
sunny prairies of Southern Texas. In all the civil- 
ized countries of the colder latitudes, catarrhs are fre- 
quent in winter and early spring, and less frequent 
in midsummer : hence the inference that catarrhs are 
caused by cold weather, and can be cured by warm 
air. Yet of the two fallacies the mosquito theory 
would, on the whole, be the less preposterous mis- 
take ; for it is true that long droughts, by parching 
out the swamps, may sometimes reduce the mos- 
quito-plague, but no kind of warm weather will miti- 
gate a catarrh, while the patient persists in doing 
what thousands never cease to do the year round, 
namely, to expose their lungs, night after night, to 
the vitiated, sickening atmosphere of an unventil- 
ated bedroom. " Colds " are, indeed, less frequent in 
midwinter than at the beginning of spring. Frost is 
such a powerful disinfectant that in very cold nights 
the lung-poisoning atmosphere of few houses can re- 
sist its purifying influence ; in spite of padded doors. 
in spite of " weather-strips " and double windows, it 
reduces the in-door temperature enough to paralyze 



198 HOUSEHOLD REMEDIES. 

the floating disease-germs. The penetrative force of 
a polar night-frost exercises that function with such 
resistless vigor that it defies the preventive measures 
of human skill ; and all Artie travelers agree that 
among the natives of Iceland, Greenland and Labra- 
dor pulmonary diseases are actually unknown. Pro- 
tracted cold weather thus prevents epidemic catarrhs, 
but during the first thaw* Nature succumbs to art : 
smoldering stove-fires add their fumes to the effluvia 
of the dormitory, tight-fitting doors and windows ex- 
clude the means of salvation : superstition triumphs ; 
the lung-poison operates, and the the next morning a 
snuffling, coughing, and red-nose family discuss the 
cause of their affliction. " Taken cold " — that much 
they premise without debate. But where and when ? 
Last evening, probably, when the warm south wind 
tempted them to open the window for a moment. Or 
" when those visitors kept chatting on the porch, and 
a drop of water from the thawing roof fell on my 



* The correlation of damp weather and catarrhs can be explained 
by the fact that moisture lessens the modicum of fresh air which 
would othewise penetrate a building in spite of closed windows. 
"All materials," says a correspondent of the "Revue des Deux 
Mondes," "become impermeable to the air when they are wet. It 
has been found less easy to drive moisture through bricks and mor- 
tar than to make air pass through them ; only a few drops of the 
liquid can be made to appear on the opposite surface. Water is 
therefore not easy to dislodge from the pores it has occupied, and 
is removed at most very slowly hj evaporation. But, when water 
stops the pores, it prevents the air from circulating through them 
— a mischievous effect upon the permeability of building materi- 
als."— (Vide "Popular Science Monthly" for December, 1883, p. 
170.) 



CATARRH — PLEURISY — CROUP. 1 99 

neck." Or else the boys caught it by playing in the 
garden and not changing their stockings when they 
came home. Resolved, that a person cannot be too 
careful, as long as there is any snow on the ground. 
But even that explanation fails in spring ; and, when 
the incubatory influence of the first moist heat is 
brought to bear on the lethargized catarrh-germs of a 
large city, a whole district-school is often turned into 
a snuffling-congress. The latter part of March is the 
season of epidemic colds. 

The summer season, however, brings relief. In the 
sweltering summer nights of our large sea-board 
towns the outcry of instinct generally prevails 
against all arguments of superstition ; parents know 
that their boys would desert and sleep in a ditch ra- 
ther than endure the horrors of an air-tight sweat- 
box ; so the windows are partially opened. The long, 
w T arm days also offer increased opportunities for out- 
door rambles. In midsummer, therefore, Nature 
rallies once more. But not always. There are people 
whose prejudices cannot be shaken by experience, 
and in their households a perennial system of air- 
poisoning overcomes the redeeming tendencies of 
out-door life, as the subtile mixtures of La Brinvil- 
liers overcame the iron constitution of her last hus- 
band. Their children snuffle the year round ; no 
cough-medicine avails, no flannels and wrappers, 
even in the dog-days ; and the evil is ascribed to 
"dampness," when the cold-theory becomes at last 
too evidently preposterous. 

To an unprejudiced observer, though, that theory 
is equally untenable in the coldest month of the 



200 HOUSEHOLD BEMEDXES. 

year. No man can freeze himself into a catarrh. In 
cold weather the hospitals of our Northern cities 
sometimes receive patients with both feet and both 
hands frozen, with frost-bitten ears and frost sore 
eyes, but without a trace of a catarrhal affection. 
Duck-hunters may wade all day in a frozen swamp 
without affecting the functions of their respiratory 
organs. Ice-cutters not rarely come in for an invol- 
untary plunge-bath, and are obliged to let their 
clothes dry on their backs ; it may result in a bowel- 
complaint, but no catarrh. Prolonged exposure to a 
cold storm may in rare cases induce a true pleural 
fever, a very troublesome affection, but as different 
from a "cold" as a headache is from a toothache — 
the upper air-passages remain unaffected. Sudden 
transition from heat to cold does not change the 
result. In winter the "pullers" of a rolling-mill have 
often to pass ten times an hour from the immediate 
neighborhood of a furnace to the chill draught of 
the open air ; their skin becomes as rough as an 
armadillo's, their hair becomes grizzly or lead-colored; 
but no catarrh. On my last visit to Mexico, I as- 
cended the peak of Orizaba from the south side, and 
reached the crater bathed in perspiration ; and, fol- 
lowing the guide across to the northwest slope, we 
were for ten minutes exposed to an ice-storm that 
swept the summit in blasts of fitful fury. Two of my 
companions, a boy of sixteen and an old army -sur- 
geon, were not used to mountain-climbing, and could 
hardly walk when we got back to our camp in the 
foot-hills, but our lungs were none the worse for the 
adventure. Dr. Franklin, who, like Bacon and Goethe, 



CATARRH — PLEURISY — CROUP. 201 

had the gift of anticipative intuitions, seems to have 
suspected the mistake of the cold-air fallacy. "I 
shall not attempt to explain," says he, "why damp 
clothes occasion colds, rather than wet ones, be- 
cause I doubt the fact ; I believe that neither the 
one nor the other contributes to this effect, and that 
the causes of colds are totally independent of wet 
and even of cold" ("Miscellaneous Works," p. 216). 

"I have, upon the approach of colder weather, re- 
moved my under-garments," says Dr. Page, "and 
have then attended to my out-door affairs, minus the 
overcoat habitually worn ; I have slept in winter in a 
current blowing directly about my head and shoul- 
ders ; upon going to bed, I have sat in a strong cur- 
rent, entirely nude, for a quarter of an hour, on a 
very cold, damp night, in the fall of the year. These 
and similar experiments I have made repeatedly, and 
have never been able to catch cold. I became cold, 
sometimes quite cold, and became warm again, that 
is all," (Natural Cure," p. 40). 

There are many ways, less often sought than found, 
for "becoming quite cold and warm again," but an 
experimenter, trying to contract a catarrh in that 
way, would soon give it up as a futile enterprise ; 
after two or three attempts he would find the attain- 
ment of his purpose more hopeless than before ; he 
would find that, instead of impairing, he had im- 
proved the functional vigor of his breathing-appara- 
tus. Cold is a tonic that invigorates the respiratory 
organs when all other stimulants fail, and, combined 
with arm-exercise and certain dietetic alteratives, 
fresh, cold air is the best remedy for all the disorders 



202 HOUSEHOLD BEMEDIES. 

of the lungs and upper air-passages. As soon as op- 
pression of the chest, obstruction of the nasal ducts, 
and unusual lassitude indicate that a "cold has been 
taken" — in other words, that an air-poison has fas- 
tened upon the bronchi — its influence should at once 
be counteracted by the purest and coldest air avail- 
able, and the patient should not stop to weigh the 
costs of a day's furlough against the danger of a 
chronic catarrh. In case imperative duties should 
interfere, the enemy must be met after dark, by de- 
voting the first half of the night to an out-door cam- 
paign, and the second half to an encampment before 
a wide-open window. If the fight is to be short and 
decisive, the resources of the adversary must be di- 
minished by a strict fast. Denutrition, or the tem- 
porary abstinence from food, is the most effect- 
ive, and, at the same time, the safest method for eli- 
minating the morbid elements of the system ; and 
there is little doubt that the proximate cause of a 
catarrh consists in the action of some microscopic 
parasite that develops its germs while the resistive 
power of the respiratory organs is diminished by the 
influence of impure air. Cold air arrests that develop- 
ment by direct paralysis. Toward the end of the 
year a damp, sultry day — the catarrh weather par 
excellence — is sometimes followed by a sudden frost, 
and at such times I have often found that a six hours' 
inhalation of pure, cold night-air will free the ob- 
structed air-passages so effectually that on the fol- 
lowing morning hardly a slight huskiness of the 
voice suggests the narrowness of the escape from a 
two weeks' respiratory misery. But, aided by exer- 



CATARRH — PLEURISY — CROUP. 203 

cise, out-door air of any temperature will accomplish 
the same effect. In two days a resolute pedestrian 
can walk away from a summer catarrh of that malig- 
nant type that is apt to defy half-open windows. But 
the specific of the movement-cure is arm-exercise — 
dumb-bell swinging, grapple-swing practice, and 
wood-chopping. On a cold morning (for, after all, 
there are ten winter catarrhs to one in summer), a 
wood-shed matinee seems to reach the seat of the dis- 
ease by an air-line. As the chest begins to heave 
under the stimulus of the exercise, respiration be- 
comes freer as it becomes deeper and fuller, expector- 
ation ceases to be painful, and the mucus is at last 
discharged en masse, as if the system had only 
waited for that amount of encouragement to rid it- 
self of the incubus. A catarrh can thus be broken 
up in a single day. For the next half -week the diet 
should be frugal and cooling. Fruit, light bread, 
and a little cold, sweet milk, is the best catarrh-diet. 
A fast-day, though, is still better. Fasting effects in 
a perfectly safe way what the old-school practitioners 
tried to accomplish by bleeding ; it reduces the semi- 
febrile condition which accompanies every severe 
cold. There is no doubt that by exercise alone a 
catarrh can gradually be "worked off." But in-doors 
it is apt to be steep up-hill work, while cold air — even 
before the season of actual frosts — acts upon pul- 
monary disorders as it does upon malarial fevers : it 
reduces them to a less malignant type. 

A combination of the three specifics — exercise, ab- 
stinence, and fresh air — will cure the most obstinate 
cold^, only, the first signs of improvement should not 



204 HOUSEHOLD REMEDIES. 

encourage the convalescent to brave the atmosphere 
of a lung-poison den. So-called chronic catarrhs 
are, properly speaking, a succession of bronchial 
fevers. The popular idea that an average "cold" 
lasts about nine days, has some foundation in truth. 
Like other fevers, catarrhs have a self-limited period 
of development, but the recovery from the first at- 
tack constitutes no guarantee against an immediate 
relapse ; on the contrary, the first seizure appears to 
prepare the way for its successors. A long sojourn in 
an absolutely pure atmosphere, as in a summer camp 
on the mountains, seems for a while to make the 
lungs catarrh-proof, by increasing the vigor of their 
resisting ability, and the returned tourist may find to 
his surprise that the air of his family den can now be 
breathed without the wonted consequences. But the 
addition of a stove or a double window at last turns 
the scales against Nature, and the first malignant 
cold reproduces the sensitiveness of the respiratory 
organs. 

After recovery from a chronic catarrh the danger 
of contagion should therefore be carefully avoided. 
In many of our Northern cities ill- ventilated reading- 
rooms are veritable hot-beds of lung-poison, as 
crowded court-rooms in the villages, and taverns and 
quilting-assemblies in the backwoods. Meeting- 
houses, with their large windows and small, rarely- 
used stoves, are less dangerous ; but stuffy school- 
rooms are as prolific of colds as swamps of mosqui- 
toes, and often counteract all sanitary precautions of 
the domestic arrangements. Stuffed railway-cars, 
too, could claim a premium as galloping-consumption 



CATARRH — PLEURISY— CROUP. 205 

factories ; and after dark the retreat to an over- 
heated "Pullman sleeper" would hardly increase the 
chances of longevity ; the best plan for long-distance 
travelers would, on the whole, be to secure a rear 
seat, where open windows are less apt to awaken the 
groans of air-fearing fellow-passengers, and risk 
cinders and smoke rather than the miasma of the gal- 
loping man-pen. 

It would be a mistake to suppose that "colds" can 
be propagated only by direct transmission or the 
breathing of recently vitiated air. Catarrh-germs, 
floating in the atmosphere of an ill-ventilated bed- 
room, may preserve their vitality for weeks after the 
house has been abandoned ; and the next renter of 
such a place should not move in till wide-open win- 
dows and doors and a thorough draught of several 
days has removed every trace of a "musty" smell. 

If a bronchial catarrh is accompanied by a persist- 
ent cough, it indicates that the affection is deep- 
seated, and that it has probably spread to the upper 
lobes of the lungs. Arm-exercise and a mild, sac- 
charine diet generally suffice to loosen the phlegm 
and thereby remove the proximate cause of the evil. 
But, if those remedies fail, there is a presumption 
that the chronic character of the affection is due to a 
permanent external cause of irritation, which can be i 
removed only by a change of air. In such cases 
cough-sirups merely palliate the evil. Medicines, 
counter-irritants, and fasting are in vain, if the lungs 
of the patient are constantly impregnated with new 
morbific germs; even exercise can do little more than 
alleviate the distress of the symptoms ; a radical 



206 HOUSEHOLD REMEDIES. 

cure is impossible as long as every night undoes the 
work of the preceding day. In a home of prejudices 
the patient should at once change his bedroom and 
take care to profit by the change. 

A neglected catarrh may result in an attack of pleu- 
risy. Each lung is inclosed in a sack-like serous 
membrane, which connects with a similar membrane 
lining the inner surface of the chest. This double 
integument, known as the pleura, or the visceral and 
parietal layer of the pleural membrane, communicates 
both with the lungs and with the upper air-passages, 
and is more or less affected by every morbid condi- 
tion of the respiratory organs. Pleurisy, or the con- 
gestion of the pleural membrane, is generally an in- 
flammatory complication of a chronic catarrh. The 
original affection may have apparently subsided. 
Counter-irritants, alcoholic tonics, etc., have subdued 
the cough ; with the exception of an occasional un- 
easiness about the chest, the condition of the patient 
seems greatly improved, only an abnormally rapid 
pulse justifies a suspicion that the smothered fire has 
not been wholly extinguished. A change of resi- 
dence or plenty of out-door exercise may perhaps 
ratify the sham-cure. A normal pulse would give as- 
surance that the masked fever has really subsided 
But under less favorable circumstances an oppressive 
heat and a strange feeling of uneasiness will some 
day announce the approaching crisis of the latent 
disorder. Chills follow at shorter and shorter inter- 
vals, and at last a pricking pang in the region of the 
upper ribs reveals the seat of the affection. Breath- 
ing soon becomes so painful that the patient finds no 



CATARRH — PLEURISY— CROUP. 207 

rest in an horizontal position, but has to sit up in his 
bed, and may feel sorely tempted to relieve his dis- 
tress by invoking the aid of the drug-gods. For be- 
lievers in the remedial resources of Nature, pleurisy 
is, indeed, a cruical test of faith, and Dr. Isaac Jen- 
nings's observations on his experience during an 
acute attack of the disease deserve to be framed in 
every hygienic sanitarium. 

"For twelve hours," says he, "breathing was at 
best laborious and painful, confining me to nearly 
an erect position in bed ; but the distress occasioned by 
efforts at coughing was indescribable. The confidence 
of my wife in the 'let-alone' treatment, which had 
been strengthening* for years, and had carried her un- 
flinchingly through a number of serious indisposi- 
tions, on this occasion faltered ; and she begged me 
to let her send for a physician to bleed me or do some- 
thing to give at least temporary relief ; ' for, said she, 
' you cannot live so.' In my own mind there was not 
the least vestige of misgiving respecting the course 
pursued. 

"In view of the constitutional defect in the pul- 
monary department of my system, and the nature and 
severity of the symptoms, it appeared to me very 
doubtful whether the powers of life would hold out 
and be able to accomplish what they had undertaken 
and put me again upon my feet. But I felt perfectly 
satisfied that whatever could be done to good purpose 
would be done, by ' due course of law. ' My mind, 
therefore, was perfectly at ease in trusting Nature's 
work in Nature's hands. There was no danger in the 
symptoms, let them run as high as they would. They 



208 HOUSEHOLD BEMEDIES. 

constituted no part of the real difficulty, but grew out 
of it. The general movement which made them ne- 
cessary was aiming directly at the removal of that 
difficulty. Instead, therefore, of being troubled 
with the idea that I could not live with such symp- 
toms, my conviction was very strong that I could live . 
better with them than without them. 

"In the morning, ten or twelve hours from the be- 
ginning of the cold chill, there was some mitigation of 
suffering, which continued till afternoon, when there 
was a slight exacerbation of symptoms ; but the 
heaviest part of the work was accomplished 
within the first twenty-four hours. From that time 
there was a gradual declension of painful symptoms, 
till the fifth day, when debility and expectoration con- 
stituted the bulk of the disease. 

"Full bleeding at the commencement of the disease, 
followed by the other 'break-up' means usually em- 
ployed in such affections, would have given me im- 
mediate relief, and, by continuing to ply active means 
as the work was urged on (for there would have been 
no stopping of it, short of stopping the action of 
the heart), the strongest, most distressing, and 
critical part of the disease might have been pushed 
forward to the fifth day ; and I might even then * 
possibly have recovered. But, granting that my life \ 
would have been spared, I suffered much less on the 
whole under the 'let alone' treatment than I should 
have done under a perturbating one, besides having 
the curative process conducted with more regular- 
ity, made shorter, and done up more effectually" 
("Medical Eeform," p. 312). 



CATAREH — PLEURISY — CROUP. 209 

After the paroxysm of the disease has subsided, the 
pectoral fever can be alleviated by the free use of 
cold water and strict abstinence from solid food. 
Avoid over- warm bedclothing. By a load of warm 
covers alone a common catarrh can be aggravated 
into a hot fever till the blanket-smothered patient is 
awakened by the throbbing of a galloping pulse. 
Exercise would promote the discharge of the accumu- 
lated serum, but, while the patient is too sore fco turn 
over in his bed, gymnastics are out of the question, 
and their effect must be accomplished by "passive ex- 
ercise," manipulation of the thorax, and a swinging 
motion in a hammock or a rocking easy-chair. With 
the aid of fresh air and abstinence the remedies of 
the movement-cure might be entirely dispensed with, 
if the accumulation of purulent matter were the only 
risk, but in acute pleurisy there is a greater danger 
from another cause, namely, that the inflamed surface 
of the visceral pleura has a tendency to adhere to the 
lining of the thorax and thus obliterate the pleural 
cavity. The consequences of that result w r ould be a 
permanent embarrassment of breathing, or even the 
total paralysis of the affected lung. Passive exercise 
and friction (rubbing the less affected parts of the 
chest with a bathing-brush) will, however, not fail to 
obviate that danger. As soon as Nature finds relief in 
a copious expectoration, the crisis of the disease is 
weathered, and further precautions may be limited to 
rest and a sparse but emulsive diet — a modicum of 
sweet cream, with oatmeal-gruel and stewed raisins. 
That pleurisy was formerly considered a most fatal 
disease can bo more than sufficiently explained by the 



210 HOUSEHOLD REMEDIES. 

fatal measures of treatment which were then in vogue. 
Dr. Buchan's "Family Medical Library," not more 
than thirty years ago about the most popular pathologi- 
cal compend, contains the following directions : "In 
the beginning of a pleurisy the only efficient course is 
to make the patient stand up on the floor, while blood 
is drawn from a large orfice until he faints or is about 
falling. ... If, after the first bleeding, the pain, with 
the other violent symptoms, should still continue, it 
will be necessary to take eight or nine ounces more. 
If the symptoms do not then abate, and the blood 
shows a strong puffy-coat, a third or even a fourth 
bleeding may be requisite. . . . Topical bleeding has 
also a good effect in this disease. It may be perform- 
ed by applying a number of leeches to the parts af- 
fected, or by cupping, which is both a more certain 
and expeditious method than the other. . . . Then, 
take : Solution of acetated ammonia, three drachms ; 
mint-water, one ounce ; tincture of opium, twenty- 
five drops ; sirup of tolu, two drachms, and an- 
timonial wine, thirty drops. Nothing is so certain 
to give speedy and permanent relief as a combina- 
ation of ipecac, calomel, and opium." And in that 
form of the disease known as "bilious pleurisy," 
"emetics and mercurial cathertics are of the utmost 
importance. . . Purgatives should be continued 
through the whole course of the disease. . . a blister 
should be applied of sufficient size to embrace the vihole 
breast " / ("Family Medical Library," pages 174, 183). 
Croup is an obstruction of the upper air-tubes, in- 
duced by the lethargic influences of overfeeding and 



CATARRH — PLEURISY — CROUP. 211 

warm, impure air. How an overloaded stomach re- 
acts on the functions of the respiratory organs, many- 
adults have an opportunity to experience in the 
strangling sensations of a " nightmare," though the 
respiratory stimulus of the cool night-air generally 
helps to overcome such affections, especially, if the 
sufferer can ease his lungs by a contraction of his 
arms or by turning over on his side. But infants are 
not only more grossly overfed than the most glutton- 
ous adults, while the phlegm-producing quality of 
their food increases the danger of respiratory obstruc- 
tions, but that danger is still aggravated by feeding 
their lungs on the sickening air of an overheated and 
ill-ventilated bedroom, and still further aggravated 
by swaddling and bandaging them in a way to pre- 
vent every motion that might help to ease their dis- 
tress. Spasmodic croup generally occurs after the es- 
tablishment of a plethoric diathesis — after persistent 
overfeeding has turned a baby into a mass of fat and 
fretful sickliness. Some night, usually after a heavy 
surfeit, the child is awakened by a feeling of suffoca- 
tion and gasps for breath till the obstruction is re- 
moved by a violent fit of coughing. "Croup-sirup" 
(treacle and laudanum) subdues the symptoms by 
lethargizing the irritability — for a little while, for soon 
a second and more violent fit has to complete the 
work of the first paroxysm by expelling the accumu- 
lated phlegm. 

But a far more dangerous form of the disease is de- 
veloped when the predisposing causes are aggravated 
by an inflammation of the larynx. Inflammatory 



212 HOUSEHOLD REMEDIES. 

croup, or exudative laryngitis,* does not occur un- 
awares, but is preceeded by a very peculiar cough, a 
hoarse, cough-like bark, mingled with strange wheez- 
ing and metallic sounds. The windpipe is congested, 
and in that note of warning appeals for relief from 
impure air and deliverance from the influence of a] 
crapulent diet. Nine times out of ten the effect of its 
appeal is a dose of narcotic cough medicine, more 
tightly-closed windows and a hotter stove. The pro- 
cess of surfeit in the mean while continues ; the wind- 
pipe, already abnormally contracted by its inflamed 
condition, becomes less and less able to resist the ob- 
structing influence of the accumulated phlegm ; at 
night, when the exclusion of every breath of fresh 
airt has still further reduced the functional energy of 
the respiratory organs, a viscid matter rises in bub- 
bles, and one of these bubbles, like a tenacious mem- 
brane, closes the tube of the larynx. Suffocation re- 
sults, and, in the ensuing struggle for life, Nature has 
a very slim chance to prevail In our Northern 
States alone, five or six thousand perish thus every 
year — killed by domestic contrivances as surely as the 
prisoners of Surajah Dowlah were killed by the arch- 

* Called also " true croup," or " pseudo-membranous laryngitis," 
" plastic laryngitis." 

t " I lately attended an infant, whom I found muffled up over 
head and ears in many folds of flannel, though it was in the mid- 
dle of June. I begged for a little free air to the poor creature ; 
but, though this indulgence was granted during my stay, I found 
it always on my return in the same situation. Death, as might 
have been expected, soon freed the infant from all its miseries ; 
but it was not in my power to free the minds of its parents from 
those prejudices which proved fatal to their child." — (Dr. G. G, 
NortUwood, " Management of Children," p. 619.) 



CATARRH— PLEURISY— CROUP. 213 

itectural arrangements of the Black Hole. If the phy- 
sician is only called in the last stage of the deliquium, 
inflammatory croup constitutes one of those excep- 
tional cases where artificial causes of diseases have to 
be met by artificial remedies. The far-gone exhaus- 
tion of the patient, a thin, expiring pulse, would in- 
dicate that tracheotomy, or the opening of the wind- 
pipe, offers the only hope of salvation. A violent, 
suffocating, and spasmodic cough w T ould indicate that 
the expulsive efforts of Nature require the aid of a 
swift emetic — tartar or ipecacuanha. 

But, if the symptoms of danger are heeded in time, 
croup is as curable as a common catarrh. As soon as 
the characteristic cough betrays the condition of the 
windpipe, the patient— infant or adult — should be re- 
duced to two meals, the last one not later than four 
hours before sunset. Flesh-food, greasy made-dishes, 
narcotic drinks, as well as all kinds of alcoholic stim- 
ulants, should be strictly avoided. Before night the 
bed should be removed to a cool and carefully ventilated 
room. Families who have no alternative should not 
, hesitate to open every window for at least fifteen min- 
utes, and in the mean while compromise with their 
prejudices by carrying the child to the next neigh- 
bor's, rather than bring it back before the air of the 
bedroom has been thoroughly purified. A draught 
of very cold air might possibly excite a cough that 
would precipitate the crisis of the disease, though by 
no means lessen the chances of a lucky issue. But 
more probably fresh air, whether cold or cool, would 
so reinforce the remedial resources of nature that the 



214 HOUSEHOLD KEMEDIES. 

inflammation would subside in the course of a few 
days. 

If, in spite of such precautions, a strangling-fit 
should occur at night, the child should be immedi- 
ately raised to a half-upright position, by making the 
weight of the body rest on the knees, with the head 
slightly inclined (face downward), the elbows back, 
and the hands resting against the hips — the position 
which a person would instinctively assume in the en- 
deavor to aid an expulsive effort of the lungs. Be- 
tween the paroxysms ease the chest by a quick for- 
ward and backward movement of the arms, and by per- 
sistent friction with a wet brush, applied to the neck and 
the upper ribs. Under the influence of these stimu- 
lants, combined with the invigorating tendency of 
fresh air, the organism will employ all its resources 
to the best advantage and soon relieve itself by a 
sort of retching cough. If the difficulty has not been 
aggravated by the use of " croup -sirup," the patient 
will rest at ease for the remaining hours of the night. 
A week may go by without a recurrence of the suffo- 
cating fit ; but only the subsidence of the inflamma- 
tion — indicated by the diminished hoarseness of the 
cough — gives a guarantee that the danger is past. 



r CHAPTEE X. 



MISCELLANEOUS REMEDIES. 

An ^Esthetics. — The inductive study of Nature has 
often proved the shortest way to discoveries which 
other methods can reach only by a circuitous route. 
The ancient Greeks, recognizing the significance of the 
fact that malarial complaints vanish at the approach 
of winter, cured their fever-patients by refrigeration 
and this century of research will perhaps close before 
some experimenting Pasteur stumbles upon the fact 
that the proximate cause of ague and yellow fever can 
be traced to the agency of microscopic parasites 
whose development may be arrested by the influence 
of a low temperature. More than two thousand years 
ago the movement-cure, the fasting-cure, and other 
reactions against the baneful tendencies of the drug- 
delusion, were anticipated by the school of the nat- 
ural philosopher Asclepiades. 

The principle of the best natural anaesthetic, too, was 
practically applied, if not theoretically understood, 
by our rude ancestors. No one who has watched the 
(215) 



216 HOUSEHOLD BEMEDIES. 

contest of a pair of rougli-and-tumble fighters — biped 
or quadruped — or participated in a scuffle of that sort, 
can doubt that the excitement of the fight tempora- 
rily blunts the feeling of pain. Count Banzau, the 
" Streit-Hans " — " Eowdy Jack, " as his comrades 
used to call him — once received three dagger-stabs 
before he knew that he was wounded at all. Soldiers, 
storming a battery, have often suddenly broken down 
from the effects of wounds which they had either not 
felt, or suspected only from a growing feeling of ex- 
haustion. Olaf Rygh, the Norwegin Herodotus, tells 
us that, when the old Baresarks felt the approach of 
their end, they robbed death of its sting by drifting 
out to sea in a scuttled or burning boat, and thus ex- 
pired, "screaming the wild battle-songs of their 
tribe." The Roman gladiators shouted and laughed 
aloud while their wounds were being dressed. A 
scalded child sobs and gasps for a therapeutical pur- 
pose : instinct teaches it the readiest way to benumb 
the feeling of pain. The physilogical rationale of all 
this is that rapid breathing is an anazsthetic. In a 
paper read before the Philadelphia Medical Society, 
May 12, 1880, Dr. W. A. Bonwill ascribes that effect to 
the influence of the surplus of oxygen which is thus 
forced upon the lungs, just as by the inhalation of 
nitrous-oxid gas (which is composed of the same ele- 
ments as common air, but with a larger proportion of 
oxygen), and mentions a large variety of cases in his 
own practice where rapid breathing produced all 
the essential effects of a chemical pain-obtunder, 
without appreciably diminishing the consciousness of 
the patient. Persons who object to the use of chlor- 



MISCELLANEOUS REMEDIES. 'ill 

oform (perhaps from an instinctive dread that in their 
case the ether-slumber might prove a sleep that 
knows no waking), can benumb their nerves during 
the progress of a surgical operation by gasping as 
deeply and as rapidly as possible, " One of the most 
marked proofs of its efficacy, " says Dr. Bonwill, 
" was the case of a boy of eleven years for whom I 
had to extract the upper and lower first permanent 
molars on both sides. He breathed rapidly for nearly 
a minute, when I removed in about twenty seconds 
all four of the teeth. He declared there was no pain, 
and we needed no such assertion, for there was not 
the slightest indication that he was undergoning a 
severe operation. " 

The administration of chloroform often produces 
distressing after-effects, nausea and sick-headaches, 
that sometimes continue for days together ; and I re- 
member two instances in the records of a French 
military hospital where it resulted fatally in the case 
of patients who had in vain protested and offered to 
forego the benefits of the anaesthetic — perhaps actu 
.ally from an instinctive consciousness of some con- 
stitutional peculiarity which in their case increased 
the risks of its use. Ether-spray, on the other hand, 
is a legitimate application of the principle that cold be- 
numbs the feeling o£ pain. Death by freezing is pre- 
ceded by an absolute anaesthesia ; and the painfulness 
of bruises, wasp-stings, etc., can be diminished by 
the topical application of an ice-poultice. 

Apoplexy. — The proximate cause of apoplexy is 
due to a congestion of the cerebral blood-vessels, in- 
duced by alcoholism, dietetic excesses, combined 



218 HOUSEHOLD REMEDIES. 

with the influence of sedentary habits. Conscious- 
ness, at least, can generally be restored by lessening 
the tendency of the circulation toward the head. 
The patient should be propped up in a sitting pos- 
ture, with his head erect, his neck bared, and his tem- 
ples and occiput moistened with cold water, while fric- 
tion or a warm foot-bath should determine the circula- 
tion toward the extremities. Open every window of the 
sick-room, and, after the patient has sufficiently re- 
covered to sit up in bed, direct him to turn his face 
toward the cool draught, and now and then cool his 
temples with a cataplasm of crushed ice. For the 
first twenty-four hours let him abstain from all solid 
food. 

Persons with an apoplectic diathesis should adopt 
a frugal and aperient diet, and avoid prolonged se- 
dentary occupations, especially in a heated room. 
They should also avoid superfluous bedclothing, and 
open their bedroom-windows in all but the stormiest 
nights. The feet, however, ought to be kept warm 
under all circumstances. Plethoric gourmands ought 
at least to renounce late suppers and alcoholic stim- 
ulants. 

Burns and Scalds. — Loose cotton, slightly moist- 
ened with linseed-oil, has an almost magical effect in 
relieving the pain of severe burns. When inflamma- 
tion has supervened the feverish condition of the pa- 
tient requires cooling ablutions and the free use of 
ice-water, both topically and as a sedative beverage. 
Slight burns can be treated with any emollient ap- 
plication, and a piece of common court-plaster is 



MISCELLANEOUS REMEDIES. 219 

sufficient to protect the sore till a new skin has form- 
ed under the blister. 

Chilblains. — The effect of frost-bites is often ag- 
gravated by a too sudden change of temperature, or 
rather by the application of the wrong kind of caloric. 
The restoring warmth should come from within rather 
than from without. It is not necessary to scrape a 
frost-bitten person with icicles, after the Russian 
plan ; friction of any kind above or around the affect- 
ed part will restore, as far as possible, the suspended 
circulation of the blood, and thus initiate the remed- 
ial functions of Nature. Deep foot-sores should be 
bandaged with linen rags and clean warm tallow. 

Dropsy. — It is a suggestive fact that the prevalence 
of dropsy has decreased since bleeding has gone out 
of fashion. There was a time when venesection was 
resorted to in nine out of ten kinds of diseases, and at 
that time a complaint which in its chronic form ap- 
pears now only almost as a consequence of outrageous 
dietetic abuses was nearly as frequent as consumption. 
Bleeding impoverishes the blood, and dropsy, in any 
of its forms, can nearly always be traced to a depra- 
vation of the humors by unwholsome food or drink, 
or a disorder of the blood-making organs. As a symp- l 
tomatic complaint, for instance, dropsy frequently ap- 
pears in the last stage of pulmonary consumption, 
when the wasted lungs have become unable to fulfil 
the chief purpose of respiration. Next to the alcohol 
habit, the habitual breathing of impure air is the 
present main cause of dropsy, for air is gaseous food, 
and a sufficient supply of oxygen a chief preliminary 
in the conditions of the blood-making process. Mai- 



220 HOUSEHOLD REMEDIES. 

arial diseases likewise impoverish the blood by a di- 
rect process of disintegration ; and dropsy appears 
as an occasional after-effect of a long-continued ague. 
Remedies : Mountain-air, a light but nourshing diet, 
and strict abstinence from alcoholic stimulants. 

Emetics. — Tepid water is a prompt, and the most 
harmless, emetic. In urgent cases (poisonings, etc.) 
add a modicum of white mustard (Siiiapis alba), and 
tickle the fauces with the wing-feather of a pigeon, 
or any similar object. Excessive vomiting can be 
checked by stimulating applications to the pit of the 
stomach and extremities. 

Epilepsy. — Epilepsy, or the falling-sickness, is a 
complication of nervous derangements, and results 
more frequently from sexual excesses than from all 
other causes combined. In young children, however, 
epilepsy is some times a consequence of teething-diffi- 
culties, of acidity in the stomach, and of worms, and 
in such cases can be readily cured by a change of regi- 
men, or, in malignant cases, by a protracted fast. For 
adults, strict continence and out-door exercise is the 
best prophylactic. Excessive heat, however, should be 
carefully guarded against, as well as all exciting pas- 
sions. 

Excoriation. — Infants are apt to become " galled " 
in particular parts of their bodies, about the groins, 
the lower part of the neck, and under the arms — es- 
pecially in consequence of the condemnable practice 
of tight swaddling. To dry up such sores, "galling- 
plasters" (acetate of lead, etc.) often lead to worse 
complications, and the best remedy is cleanliness, and 



MISCELLANEOUS REMEDIES. 221 

fine lint, smeared with spermaciti-ointment or warm 
tallow. 

Fainting-fits, or Syncope. — Syncope, or, "faint- 
ing*," " Ohnmacht" "Desmayo" as three nations have 
called it with a correct appreciation of its chief cause, 
as distinct from that of apoplexy and convulsions, re- 
sults from a general deficiency of vital strength. Cold 
water, applied to the neck, the feet, and the palms of 
the hands, by means of a bathing-brush, is the best 
restorative. In severe cases inflation of the lungs by 
mechanical means has often proved effective. Dr. 
Englernan mentions the case of a lady in child-bed, 
who, "after being happily delivered, suddenly fainted 
and lay upward of a quarter of an hour apparently 
dead. A physician had been sent for ; her own maid, 
in the mean while, being out of patience at his delay, 
attempted to assist her herself, and, extending her- 
self upon her mistress, applied her mouth to hers, 
blew in as much breath as she possibly could, and in 
a very short time the exhausted lady awakened as 
out of a deep slumber, when proper things being 
given her, she soon recovered. The maid being asked 
how she came to think of this expedient, said she 
had once seen it practiced by a midwife with the hap- 
piest effect." 

A little stream of water falling from a height on the 
face and neck, the irritation of the olfactory nerves 
by means of snuff or pungent smells (burned popper, 
etc.), the motion of a rumbling cart, have now and 
then sufficed to restore suspended animation. Persons 
subject to fainting-fits can use no better prophylactic 



222 HOUSEHOLD EEMEDIES. 

than gymnastics in winter, and cold baths and pedes- 
trian excursions in summer-time. 

Febrile Affections. — In all disorders of a malarial 
and typhoid character, as well as in scarlet fever, 
measles, small-pox, and epidemic erysipelas, refrig- 
eration is more efficacious than medicine. In several 
zymotic diseases, beside cholera and yellow fever, the 
action of antiseptic drugs is annulled by the inversion 
of the digestive process : the chyle is forced back 
upon the stomach, and mingled with the red corpus- 
cles of the disintegrated blood, is voided in that dis- 
charged of cruor known as the black-vomit. Bleed- 
ing, instead of reducing the virulence of the fever, is 
apt to exhaust the little remaining strength of the 
patient. Lord Byron, for instance, was bled to death 
as surely as if the surgeon had cut his throat. 

Gout. — A paroxysm of this dreadful penalty of idle- 
ness and intemperance is preceded by certain char- 
acteristic symptoms — lassitude, eructations, a dull 
headache, involuntary tears, a shivering sensation 
about the groins and thighs. If the lassitude has not 
yet taken the form of an unconquerable lethargy, the 
patient may obviate the crisis of his affection by se- 
vere and unremitting physical exercise, a prophylactic 
which though doubly grievous in a debilitated con- 
dition, is incomparably preferable to the hellish 
alternative. I knew an old army officer who kept 
a spade in his bed-room, and, at the slightest pre- 
monitory symptoms, fell to work upon a sandy hill- 
side, and once dug a deep trench of forty -five feet in 
a single night, and toward morning staggered to his 
quarters and had barely time to reach his bed before 



MISCELLANEOUS REMEDIES. 223 

he sank down in a deliquium of exhaustion, and awak- 
ened late in the afternoon as from a fainting-fit, 
with sore knees and sorer hands, but without a trace 
of the gout from which his compact with the powers 
of darkness proved to have respited him for a full 
month. The racking pain can be somewhat relieved 
by such counter-irritants as blisters, violent friction 
with hot flannel, etc., or actual cautery and topical 
application of opiates. The experiments of sixteen 
carnivorous and alcohol-drinking nations have reveal- 
ed dozens of similar palliatives, but only two radical 
remedies — frugality and pesistent exercise. 

Headache. — Chronic headache is generally a symp- 
tom of disordered digestion. To attempt the sup- 
pression of the effect while the cause remains can 
bring only temporary relief, or even increases the 
subsequent malignity of the disorder. Strong black 
tea may thus act as a charm — for a day or so ; but 
with the next morning the trouble not only returns, 
but returns aggravated by the supposed remedy, for 
chronic headache has no more potent single cause 
than the habitual use of narcotic drinks. A frugal, 
non-stimulating regimen, on the other hand, brings 
help more slowly but permanently, unless the patient 
abuses the restored vigor of his digestive organs. 
Acute headaches can generally be traced to influences 
which tend to obstruct the free circulation of the 
blood — tight clothing, coldness of the extremities, op- 
pressive atmospheric conditions, etc. — and can be 
cured only by a direct removal of the cause. As a 
symptomatic result of a vitiated state of the humors, 



224 HOUSEHOLD REMEDIES. 

as in scrofula and V3nereal diseases, headaches that 
defy all medicine often yield to a grape-cure. 

Heart-burn or Oardialgia. — Both words are mis- 
nomers, the seat of the pain being the pit of the 
stomach, and the cause gastric acidity ; remedies — 
fasting and "passive exercise," a ride in a jolting 
cart, kneading of the abdomen, etc. 

Hypochondria, Chronic Melancholy, Spleen. — Rob- 
ert Burton, in his "Anatomy of Melancholy," enumer- 
ates some six thousand causes of chronic despon- 
dency, and about as many different remedies, of 
which only six or seven are apt to afford permanent 
relief : frugality, temperance, early rising, life with a 
rational object (altruistic, if egotism palls), construc- 
tive exercise in the open air, a sunny climate, and so- 
cial sunshine — the company of children and optimists. 

Insomnia. — The proximate cause of sleeplessness 
is plethora of the cerebral blood-vessels, and a palli- 
ative cure can be effected by anything that lessens 
the tendency of the circulation toward the head. But 
a permanent cure may require time and patience. 
By night-studies brain-workers sometimes contract 
chronic insomnia in that worst form which finds re- 
lief only in the stupor of a low fever, alternating 
with consecutive days of nervous headaches. Re- 
forming topers often have to pass through the same 
ordeal, before the deranged nervous system can be 
restored to its normal condition. Fresh air, especially 
of a low temperature, pedestrian exercise, and an 
aperient diet, are the best natural remedies. Under 
no circumstances should sleeplessness be overcome 
by narcotics. An opium torpor cannot fulfill the 



MISCELLANEOUS REMEDIES. 225 

functions of refreshing sleep ; we might as well 
benumb the patient by a whack on tho skull. 

Jaundice. — Jaundice and chlorosis are kindred 
affections, and the yellow tinge of the skin is often 
in both cases due to an impoverished state of the 
blood — especially a deficiency in the proportion oi 
the red blood-corpuscles — rather than to a diffusion 
of bilious secretions. Jaundice, as a consequence of 
obstinate agues, is evidently the result of a catalytic 
process which disintegrates the constituent parts of 
the blood. The bite of poisonous animals has often 
a similar effect. The most frequent predisposing 
cause, however, is want of sun-light and out-door 
exercise. Jaundice and chronic melancholy are often 
concomitant affections, and both a penalty of our 
dreary, sedentary modes of life. The ancients, in- 
deed, ascribed both complaints to the same cause, 
for melancholy is derived from a word which means 
literally "atrabilious," or black-biled. But the truth 
seems to be that functional disorders of the liver are 
the result rather than the cause of a general torpor 
of the vital process. Remedy — out-door sports, com- 
bined with as much fun and sunshine as possible. 
Alcoholic jaundice-cures may restore the ruddiness 
of the complexion by keeping the system under tho 
influence of a stimulant fever ; but we might as w T cli 
congratulate ourselves on the return of health when 
pulmonary affections mimic its color with their hectic 
glow. 

Mental Disorders. — The Lcdita Vistara says that 
on the day when Buddha, the savior, was born, 
tho sick regained their health and the insane their 



226 HOUSEHOLD BEMEDIES. 

memory. Insanity might, indeed, be defined as a 
partial derangement or suspension of the faculty of 
recollection. Nature takes that method of obliterat- 
ing the memory of impressions which the soul is 
unable to bear, and thus preserves life at the expense 
of its intellectual continuity. Lunatics are generally 
monomaniacs ; their judgment may be sound in many 
respects, but at the mention of a special topic, be- 
trays the partial eclipse of its light. It may be pos- 
sible that people have been killed by the sudden an- 
nouncement of good news, but, for one person who 
has lost his reason from an excess of joy, millions 
have lost it from an excess of sorrow — a crushing ca- 
lamity, or the oppressive and at last unbearable 
weight of the dreariness, the soul-stifling tedium of 
modern life in many of its phases. The sick soul 
may have stilled its hunger with a long-hoarded hope, 
till the evident exhaustion of that hoard leaves only 
the alternative of despair or refuge in the Lethe of 
dementation. "Where insanity is at all curable it can 
be cured by the removal of its chief cause — sorrow ; 
and the best remedies are kindness, mirth, and a 
pleasant occupation. In the middle ages, when both 
lunacy and the love of earthly happiness were as- 
cribed to the machinations of the devil, lunatics were 
chained and horsewhipped for the double benefit of 
their souls, and with results which almost justified 
the demon hypothesis. Breughel's best illustrations 
for Dante's hell were made after studies in an Aus- 
trian mad-house. The extreme antithesis of such in- 
fernos is perhaps the State Lunatic Asylum at Tusca- 
loosa, Alabama, where the shadow of gloom has been 



MISCELLANEOUS REMEDIES. 227 

so successfully banished that the happiest results of 
the cure have almost been anticipated by its methods : 
the restoration of reason itself could hardly give the 
patients an additional reason for being happy. They 
have a park, a flower-garden, and a pet nursery of 
their own; they have books and music, gymnasia, 
bath-rooms, and amateur workshops. Wherever their 
road leads, they can travel it in sunshine, even on 
hobby-back if they choose, for they have a philo- 
sophical weekly of their own, with full permission to 
explain the revelation of St. John. 

Myopia — short-sightedness, and far-sightedness 
(presbyopia), were formerly regarded as absolutely 
incurable affections, because they were evidently not 
amenable to the influence of any known drug. But 
" drug " and " remedy " have at last ceased to be syn- 
onymous terms ; and, though constitutional defects 
of the eye may preclude the possibility of a complete 
cure, there is no doubt that those defects can be modi- 
fied by a judicious treatment, especially by a mode of 
life tending to restore the general vigor of the sys- 
tem, by out-door exercise, and by rambles in green, 
sunny woods, for the colors of the summer forest are 
as beneficial to the eye as its atmosphere to the lungs. 
Weak eyes can be strengthened by gradually exercis- 
ing the capacity of the optic nerve, scrutinizing small 
objects, first at a moderate and by-and-by at a greater 
distance, but withal guarding against a fatiguing ef- 
fort of the eye. 

Pimples. —The best cosmetic is a grape-cure, i. e., 
a frugal saccharine, and sub-acid diet, combined with 



228 HOUSEHOLD EEMEDIES. 

out-door exercise in the bracing air of a highland 
country. 

Rheumatism. — Rheumatism, like gout, is a conse- 
quence of dietetic abuses. Counter-irritants, hot 
baths, etc., can effect a brief respite, but the only per- 
manent specific is fasting. Before the end of the sec- 
ond day a hunger cure benumbs the pain ; the organ- 
ism, on being obliged to feed upon its own tissues, 
seems to undergo a process of renovation which alone 
can reach the root of the complaint. Exercise and 
great abstemiousness will prevent a relapse. 

Sckofula. — A scrofulous taint is in some cases her- 
editary, and yields only to years of dietetic reform, 
but, on the whole, there is no more perfectly curable 
disease. In all but its most malignant forms it yields 
readily to the influence of pure air and pure food — 
out-door life, and a wholesome, vegetable diet. Skin- 
cleaning nostrums only change the form of the dis- 
ease by driving it from the surface to the interior of 
the body. 

Toothache. — The extraction of every unsound tooth 
and the insertion of a " new set " would certainly re- 
move, in ipsa radice, the seat, if not the cause, of the 
evil. But the trouble is, that the function of proper 
mastication is an indispensable preliminary of diges- 
tion, and that for practical efficacy the last stump of 
a natural tooth is infinitely preferable to the best arti- 
ficial substitute. The best plan, would, therefore, be 
to let the stumps remain, and get rid of the pain, and 
the latter end can be attained by a slow but infallible 
method. Within half a year after the change of re- 
gimem, absolute abstinence from hot drinks (especially 



MISCELLANEOUS REMEDIES. 229 

boiling hot, sweet tea) and a very sparing use of ani- 
mal food will benumb the sensitiveness of the irritated 
nerves. I knew an old Mestizo who had learned to chew 
apples with his bare gums, but only after necessity 
had reduced him to a frugal regimem. A saccharine 
diet in the form of sweet, ripe fruit has certainly no- 
thing to do with the decay of the teeth, and it is a 
suggestive fact that toothache is almost exclusively 
an affliction of the northern nations. 

Warts and Corns. — The predisposing cause of warts 
is unknown, and the popular remedies are rarely per- 
manent. I have known warts to reappear after they 
had been thoroughly removed by the use of corrosive 
acids. The popular belief that they " spread " if the 
operation involves bleeding seems not to be wholly 
unfounded, and large warts can be more effectually 
cured by means of a tight ligature that gradually 
deadens the tissue. Warts on the upper side of the 
fingers can generally be atophied by exerting a long- 
continued strain upon the adjoining muscles, as in 
holding up a heavy weight, or seizing the rings of a 
grapple-swing and dangling by one hand as long as 
the fingers can support the strain. A callous skin is 
thus formed under the wart, and before long the ex- 
cresence disappears. Corns are entirely owing to the 
pressure of tight shoes, and can be cured by the use 
of more commodious foot-wear. To suppress the 
symptom, while the cause remains, is of little avail, 
and, before a chiropodist could keep his promise to 
" remove corns with the root," he would have to eradi- 
cate the folly of heeding the mandates of fashion ra- 
ther than the appeals of Nature. 



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PHRENOLOGICAL JOURNAL 

Is widely known in America and Europe, having been before the reading world fifty years, 
and occupying a place in literature exclusively its own, viz., the study of Human Nature 
in all its phases, including Phrenology, Physiognomy, Ethnology, Physiology, etc., to- 
gether with the "Science of Health," and no expense will be spared to make it the 
best publication for general circulation, tending always to make men better physically, 
mentally, and morally. Parents and teachers should read the Journal, that they may bet- 
ter know how to govern and train their children. Young people should read the journal, 
that they may make the most of themselves. It has long met with the hearty approval 



of the press and the people. 

M. V. Times says : " The Phrenological j 
Journal proves that the increasing years of a 
periodical is no reason for its lessening its en- 
terprise or for diminishing its abundance of in- 
teresting matter. If all magazines increased in 
merit as steadily as The Phrenological Jour- 
nal, they would deserve in time to show equal 
evidences of popularity." i 



Christian Union says : " It is well known as 
a popular storehouse for useful thought. It 
teaches men to know themselves, and co\ - 
stantly presents matters of the highest interest 
to intelligent readers, and has the advantage of 
having always been not only ' up with the 
times, but a little in advance. Its popularity 
shows the result of enterprise and brains." 



TERMS. — The Journal is published monthly at $2.00 a year, or 20 cents a 
Number. To each yearly subscriber is given either the Bust or Chart Premium described 
above. When the Premiums are sent, 15 cents extra must be received with each sub- 
scription to pay postage on the JOURNAL and the expense of boxing and packing the 
Bust, which will be sent by express, or No. 2, a smaller size, or the Chart Premium, will 
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Send amount in P. O. Orders, P. N., Draitson New York, or in Registered Letters. 
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FOWLER & WELLS CO., Publishers, 753 Broadway, New York. 



^l. NEW BOOK. 

HEALTH IN THE HOUSEHOLD; 

OR, 

HYGIENIC COOKERY 



By SUSAHNA W. DODDS, M.D. 



One large 1 2mo vol., 600 pp., extra cloth or oil-cloth. Price, $2.oa 



The author of this work is specially qualified for her task, as she is both 
a physician and a practical housekeeper. It is unquestionably the best 
woik ever written on the healthful preparation of food, and should be in 
the haads of every housekeeper who wishes to prepare food healthfully and 
palatably. The best way and the reason why are given. It is complete in 
every department. To show something of what is thought of this work, we 
:opy a few brief extracts from the many 

NOTICES OF THE PRESS. 

* 4 This work contains a good deal of excellent advice about wholesome food, and 
Sfives directions for preparing many dishes in a way that will make luxuries for the 
palate oat of many simple productions of Nature which are now lost by a vicious cook- 
ery."— Home Journal. 

u Another book on cookery, and one that appears to De fully the equal in all respects, 
And superior to many of its predecessors. Simplicity is sought to be blended with 
science, economy with all the enjoyments of the table, and health and happiness with an 
ample household liberality. Every purse and every taste will find in Mrs. Doids' book, 
material within itn means of grasp for efficient kitchen administration."— N. T. Star. 

" The book can not fail to be of great value in every household to those who wiil in- 
telligently appreciate the author's stand-point. And there are but few who will not con- 
cede that it would be a public benefit if our people generally would become better in. 
formed as to the better mode of living than the author intends."— Scientific American. 

"She evidently knows what she is writing about, and her book is eminently practi- 
cal upon every page. It is more than a book of recipes for making soups, and pies, and 
take ; it is an educator of how to make the home the abode of healthful people."— The 
Daily Inter-Ocean, Chicago, 111. 

14 The book is a good one, and should be given a place in every well-regulated cuitins" 
—Indianapolis Journal. 

\s a comprehensive work on the subject of healthf al cookery, there is no other 5tj 
print which is superior, and which brings the subject so cleariy and squarely to the un- 
derstanding of an average housekeeper. —Methodist Recorder. 

" In this book Dr. Dodds deals with the whole subject scientifically, and yet has 
made her instructions entirely practical. The book will certainly prove useful, and if 
Its precepts could be universally followed, without doubt human life would be consider- 
ably lengthened."— Springfield Union. 

4 Here is a cook-book prepared by an educated lady physician. It seems to be a 
very sensible addition to the voluminous literature on this subject, which ordinarily has 
little reference to the hygienic character of the preparations which are described."— 
Zion'8 Herald. 

44 This one seems to us to be most sensible and practical, while yet based upon scien 
tiflc principles— in short, the best. If it were in every household, there would be far less 
misery in the world."— South and Wes*. 

"There is much good sense in the book, and there is plenty of occasion for attacking 
the ordinary methods of cooking, as well as the common style of diet."— Morning Star. 

44 She sets forth the why and wherefore of cookery, and devotes the larger portion of 
the work to those articles essential to good blood, strong bodies, and vigorous ipind*."— 
New Haven Register. 

The work will be sent to any address, by mail, post-paid, on i?*ceipt of 
price, $2.00. Agents Wanted, to whom special terms will be given. Seed 
for terms. Address 

FOWLER & WELLS €0.- Publishers, 753 Broadway, Mew York. 



WORKS PUBLISHED BV 
FOWLER & WELLS CO., New York. 



PHRENOLOGY AND PHYSIOGNOMY. 



American Phrenological Journal and 
Science of Health.— Devoted to Eth- 
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This work gives ill and definite directions 
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Constitution of Man ; Consider- 
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These are the lectures delivered by George 
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There is an increasing interest in the facts relating to Magnetism, etc., and we present 
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Practical Instructions in Animal 
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History of Salem Witchcraft.— A 

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Fascination ; or, the Philosophy of 

Charming. Illustrating the Principles 
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Six Lectures on the Philosophy of 

Mesmerism, delivered in Marlboro' Chap- 
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The Philosophy of Electrical Psy- 
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Charming. Illustrating the Principles 
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Without : being an unfolding of the plan 
of Creation, and the Correspondence of 
Truths. — The Philosophy of Electrical 
Psychology ; the Doctrine of Impressions ; 
including the connection between Mind 
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Soul, considered Physiologically and Philo- 
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Notes of Mesmeric and Psychical experi- 
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Nervous System. 1 vol. $3.50. 

How to Magnetize ; or, Magnetism 
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on the Method of Procedure. By Jamhs 
Victor Wilson. iSmo, paper, -35 cts. 

The Key to Ghostism. By Rev, 
Thomas Mitchel. Si.jo, 



HEALTH BOOKS. 

This List comprises the Best Works on Hygiene, Health, Etc. 



Household Remedies. — For the Prev- 
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Fairchild(M. Augusta, M.D.)— How 
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Drug Medicines ; also, General Hints on 
HeaJth. Si. 00. 

Graham (Sylvester). — Science of 
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Chastity. — Lectures to Young 

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i2mo. Paper, 50 cents. 

Gully (J. M., M.D.) — Water-Cure 
in Chronic Diseases. An Exposition 
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and Skin, and of their Treatment by 
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For Girls ; A Special Physiology, or 
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The Natural Cure of Consuiiip- 

TION, Constipation, Bright's Disease, Neu- 
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H 



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Horses : their Feed and their Feet. 
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Gully (J. M., M.D.) and Wilson 
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White (Wm., M.D.)— Medical Elec- 
TRICITY. — A Manual for Students, show- 
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Galvanism, Electro-Magnetism, Magneto- 
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Transmission ; or, Variations of Char- 
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The Man Wonderful in the House 

Beautiful. An Allegory, Teaching 
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Allen. $1.50. 

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3 



